


The Butterfly Effect

by inK_AddicTion



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: F/F, Infertility, M/M, Multi, References to Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-05-11 04:37:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5614156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inK_AddicTion/pseuds/inK_AddicTion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>butterfly effect<br/>noun<br/>(with reference to chaos theory) the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.<br/>-<br/>On a whim, Mother Nature saves the life of a sick Sophie Bennett.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sylphidine_Gallimaufry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylphidine_Gallimaufry/gifts).



The mother squeezed the damp cloth over her child's head, her touch as soft and delicate as the brush of a butterfly's wing. Her face was ravaged by tears but tender with love, her hair messy, circles under her sunken eyes. The father sat on the other side of the bed, holding one tiny, feverish hand, the line of his shoulders haggard and stubble haphazard on his jaw.

The bed was very white, very clean, very soft, the exact middle indented by a small imperfection, a lump in the clinical straight white lines. The child huddled there, malapropos in an environment supposedly designed for her healing. A nurse bustled quietly around the bed, unobtrusive, drawing the colourless curtains until only a chink of the moon's light could press through.

A splay of wispy blonde was just visible under swaddling blankets. The girl's face was screwed up and flushed ugly red, the crack of her tiny blue eyes shut. Restlessly, she stirred in her faintly lurid dreams.

They were waiting for the child to die.

Diagnoses had rung left, right and center when the Bennetts had first brought their youngest child to hospital, worried about the symptoms which had quickly worsened. Their child, a young and scrappy thing, had gone from bright-eyed and robust to pale, lethargic and breathless, rattling with a new infection each day.

They'd left it too late, the hospital staff had murmured to each other when the blood tests had come back. They'd done all they could, keeping the young Sophie in hospital for the six-month duration of her treatment, all they could until the Bennetts' bank accounts were run dry and they'd amassed more debt than they'd hope to pay off, but there was nothing to be done.

Painted smiles could only feign so much, worsening reports could only be brightened a finite amount by cheery tones, sympathy could only bandage an invisible wound a little. The end was inevitable for Sophie Bennett, only a year old. One third of children, statistically, did not survive, and soon Sophie would join their number.

Only a miracle of nature could save her now.

Fortunately, there was one such creature stalking through the early evening gloom not too far away. Tall and scarred, scowling and thunderous, with crackling black billowing hair that rippled like a river under the insistent touch of the pale moonlight, a woman strode. She was imperious and bare-footed, with foxes scampering at the hems of the grass that grew off her skin, imitating a dress with the carelessness of a woman who felt no shame in her natural state; she had glossy jet crows roosting on her shoulders with the tentative impermanence of a bird resting on the most volatile of perches.

Trees whispered longingly at her passing, and old porches creaked as if they remembered the pulse of life through their old timbers. Nestled in the cavity where the heartless woman's pumping organ should reside, nature sighed, and grew, and grew. Even the rambunctious winds tussled about her, like young boys eager to prove themselves to an overprotective mother. At each step of a callused foot, perhaps once slim and pretty-looking, but now worn and roughened by years of hard, backbreaking toil, weeds twisted out from cracks in the paving, old seeds spurred by the presence of the lifebringer above.

She was Mother Nature, and Seraphina was a name that meant nothing.

The Moon, a pale, persistent presence, pulsed softly far above. The dark purple sky made his fully opened eye brighter, chasing away the bruised clouds that threatened to obstruct the moonbeams reaching down to the planet below.

The rough woman's chapped lips twisted into a flat line, and the grooves etched by her scowl only carved deeper. There was a telling impatience in the silence, like a conversation was being conducted a step to the left and below of human hearing, a filter in which the fantastic still roamed.

Her teeth ground, and she jerked to a stop, her swaying hair and the birds shooting forwards in shock, animate, the strands roiled and came alive like hissing snakes spitting condemnation. She glared up at the Moon, flat teeth bared, cold, sharp green eyes piercing and frustrated.

“No more!” Her voice was neither sharp nor shrill, but absolute in its command.

Rebellious, the Moon glowed, untouched by her powers. Away from her planet, he had little to fear of her anger.

“Too long,” Mother Nature spat, “Too long I've let these _humans_ take what they want from me. They rape me, my children, and I am supposed to _condone_ and encourage this? I have had enough of these greedy apes!”

The Moon shimmered ingratiatingly.

Mother Nature snorted, vitriolic and uncaring. “So what if the spirits will starve without their belief? They're lazy, they're poisonous, and they'll only bother to think with their corpulent, swollen little minds if there's something they can get out of it, much less believe!” After a pause, she continued, in a tone no less angry or bitter but now coloured with wistfulness, “I remember when every human was born with the ability to see through the veil. But now they blind themselves to it. Something needs to change, and if that means the end of humanity – good riddance!”

Dimming, the Moon seemed to be shining particularly pleadingly.

“Children? They are no different. Vile things, raised grossly on indolence and disrespect. Bah! When I was a girl, we _respected_ nature, not -”

The Moon interrupted with a rather tired-looking and sly pulse.

Mother Nature sputtered. “Of course I don't wish my childhood on them! No one born on this planet would survive the tests I had to go through, and you know why? Because _I_ protect them, because I care and provide for them. And how do they repay me...? No, I am _not_ needlessly bitter-”

The argument continued for some time, during which Mother Nature repeatedly tried to block the Moon out with clouds, however, with a particularly annoying sheen to his glow, he burnt holes straight through them and refused to be silent despite the increasing level of vitriol aimed at him.

“I don't _care_ how much you 'bet me', you can't change my mind! No, I don't have to _prove it!”_ Mother Nature snarled.

Rain lashed down like the cracks of a whip, striking the panes of windows and howling icy, clawed gusts into open windows. Mother Nature's mercurial moods seeped into the weather that breathed in her bones, and her anger snapped restraints that had never been effective. All around them, any entrance had been firmly shuttered and boarded up, gates tied shut to stop them shrieking open as the night deepened and the storm blew in. The wildness sang in her bones, and recklessly, Mother Nature cocked her head at the one defiant, shining light in the rising thunderous brass of the stormfront. A single window, the curtains not quite closed all the way, left an offensive brightness of warm, friendly-looking light into the savage night, an affront, Mother Nature considered.

She approached it with heavy steps, and the building itself seemed to quiver in fear at incurring her wrath, some dim memory of when it had once been a part of her righteous fury. It was a brief distraction from the Moon, who seemed to dim, pausing to see what she would do next with sorrowful expectancy.

A blast of wind found the cracks in the window and hurled the curtains apart, and Mother Nature stepped up to the window.

She paused.

The hesitance was barely there, half a second, but it was noticeable to the Moon, who tried not to let his smugness show. As much as she believed she didn't care, that her heart was impenetrable, even Mother Nature paused at the suffering of a child.

Something that rang of a mother's sympathy persuaded her to turn aside, and Mother Nature allowed the curtains to fall. The parents losing their child tonight hardly needed her to add to their burdens. She must be getting soft, she thought bitterly.

The Moon shone so brightly that she stopped again, astounded by his suggestion.

“ _Save_ her? Why would I do that? Death happens.”

Ever the persistent one, the Moon continued to shine, hoping she would allow him some concession. Reluctantly, Mother Nature was forced to listen. She glanced back to the depressing scene behind the glass, two parents sat at the bed of their child, kissing her damp forehead, murmuring quiet nothings the child could not hear, but that comforted them to say, and sighed, flurries of wind rushing past her lips.

“Why are you so insistent over some human brat? Thousands die every day!” The words were harsh but her voice was quieter, striving to reach the snap of true uncaring numbness but falling short.

There was silence for a long time. The Moon glowed, impassioned. Finally, Mother Nature sighed and threw her arms up in frustration. “Fine, I'll save the stupid child – just be _quiet_!”

Somewhat surprised, the Moon paused mid-pulse, then began to glow very brightly and happily indeed.

Grumbling, Mother Nature closed her eyes. The vines on her body twisted and shuddered, and her hair flared in an unfelt gust of wind. In an instant, she was everywhere, in the pounding hearts of humans and animals, in the nurse's breath, the father's thinning hair, the silent and unprotesting bedframe, the cotton in the sheets, the earth, the trees, the skies, the tiny moving beetle to the languid panther, the great denizen of the sea to the crab, in the darkest unexplored depths of the Mariana Trench to New York's busiest street, and inside the body of her child, the little girl on the bed called Sophie Bennett.

Mother Nature breathed, and the world sighed through her veins.

Her scarred finger lifted, and a single, tiny emerald butterfly formed there, no bigger than the size of her thumbnail. Papery-insubstantial wings tested the howling gale, and impervious to it all Mother shepherded it to the thin lips of the sick child.

Sophie breathed, and the butterfly tumbled down into her throat, and dissolved there, a pulse of Life inside the cancerous sickness. Colour flushed along her cheeks, her hair brightened and sharpened to bright gold, and for the briefest moment, her entire body thrilled to the raw and unbridled power of the nature spirit standing outside. The storm crescendoed as the parents shouted, and Sophie laughed with the innocent, simple joy of a child who would live.

Mother Nature walked away, satisfaction warming somewhere even if she refused to admit it. The Moon gleamed obnoxiously with pride, and Mother Nature glanced up and sniffed, “I _know_ I won't regret it.” Another pause.

“What difference can one little girl make?”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Sophie grew into a normal sort of child. She giggled, laughed and played; her eyes were bright and her health strong. If sometimes she pointed at things that neither parents nor brother could see, and if sometimes her gurgling almost-speech came when no face leant over her crib – well, children would be children.

Mrs and Mr Bennett learned early on that Sophie had an active imagination. In her strange, childlike way, she would babble about strange things, insane things, wondrous things that would have been far more concerning to them if they'd been able to understand her fragmented speech a little better.

Or perhaps not. The words of children are often disregarded, after all, no matter how true or portentous.

Nonetheless, perhaps Mrs Bennett had an inkling that her daughter, whose miraculous recovery was something she was thankful for everyday, was something a little different to her brother, who was now eight and firmly adamant that all matter of unseen spirits roamed the world in secret, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and all.

Imaginary friends were normal, supposed Mrs Bennett to her husband. Imaginary friends, however, described as “GREENIE!”, “SCARY!”, and “MOMMA!” less so. After all, no responsible parent would trust the green woman Sophie claimed to see, the scarred green woman who had eyes like bitter stones but a face that fell in sad lines and who always walked on her own. (Not to mention, a rather impractical dress, the average mortal would suppose, of the _hippie_ sort, well, that sort of long hair was just ridiculous to maintain, and where were her _shoes?)_ Though she did not know it at the time, Sophie would later be thankful that her speech hadn't been the most understandable as a two year old.

Greenie, of course, wasn't in attendance all the time, but that made the moments when she deigned to drop in and check on the grubby little ape that felt the need to smear snot on the leaves of her dress, pull the flowers out of her hair, and try to climb her tall frame, all the more... _special._ Mother Nature was still privately convinced that the Man in the Moon had placed a sneaky spell on her while she had been leaving that night.

She had left that once, yes...but she had also _come back._

The first time had been something of an accident. Mother Nature had been bullying the flowers into bloom sometime around Sophie's second year somewhere nearby (she believed Ohio was the human name? Mother Nature had never cared for human borders; too much hassle and nature thrived in all of its peoples) when she had felt a yank in her chest, where her core resided. Curious, and mildly aggravated, she'd summoned her most thunderous lightning clouds to pummel whomever had had the _gall_ to summon _her –_ Mother Nature, the Witch of Storms, she whose heart beat in the breast of every living thing! – into the ground, and rode them to the source.

Instead of some weak-kneed human sorcerer or wise-man, perhaps an aspiring druid, she found a small, snotty-nosed ape with hair in her eyes wailing on the porch because she'd tripped over and, as she explained in very tearful baby-babbling, hurt her foot.

That day, Mother Nature learned that while “mother” was in her title, it did not in any way mean she was equipped to deal with children.

Sophie had not been reasonable when Mother Nature explained that her foot, in fact, was not critically injured. She had not even bruised it. She had not been reasonable when Mother Nature had threatened her with smiting if Sophie summoned her like a recalcitrant dog again. She had most certainly not been reasonable when Mother Nature, very awkwardly, had attempted to leave, a human child clinging like a strangler vine to her calf and paying no mind to the curious animals that slithered over Mother Nature's body coming to take a look.

Mother Nature learnt then that crying children were even worse than normal children.

Her respect for the Guardians of Childhood was beginning to rise, and that was a most distressing sign that Mother Nature was either injured, dying, or mentally compromised.

After that ordeal, Mother Nature never thought she would return again. The encounter had only more firmly persuaded her that humans were messy, uncouth and generally repugnant creatures, and their young were nothing more than irritants.

But... when a butterfly landed on her fingertip sometime in southern Australia and told her in its whispering wingbeats that the human child dreamt of flight, dreamt of soaring winds, and had attempted to achieve the dream by jumping out of the window and nearly getting sent back to hospital, Mother Nature went to check.

She'd made an investment, after all... There was no use in saving the child only to let her die from her own stupidity before she'd even learnt to _think_.

Sometimes, largely out of a vague sense of vexation that Sophie seemed to believe that Mother Nature sat around doing nothing when Sophie wasn't excitedly showing her some sort of bizarre noodle picture that was, in Mother Nature's opinion, a hideous waste of her resources, she purposefully ignored the tuggings in her core. Struck by a nagging sense of worry and guilt, most uncharacteristic, she assured whichever animal was closest whenever she snuck back for a visit, she would try to check the child hadn't accidentally brained herself in her absence.

She'd yet to find how much of her core she'd accidentally embedded in Sophie when she'd healed her, enough to allow her to interact with her, a spirit, and certainly more than most living creatures, but was it enough to allow her to walk in the spirit world, or see other spirits without belief? It was the tiny spark of spiritmagic in every living thing, the spark of Mother Nature's core and a few others necessary for creatures – Fear, Wishes, things like that – that allowed belief to break the thin walls between the spirit world and the physical human one.

A human, destructive capability and all, with the power to access the last refuge of spirits was an unthinkable prospect. Mother Nature spent time observing the child, judging whether the risk was one she could afford taking. Out of spite, she didn't hold any great favour with the idea of simply killing the child – not for any moral reason, but more because her brother-spirit Death would be all too smug about her doing his work for him.

Mother Nature snorted. As if she would ever make that creature's miserable existence easier for him. He could get up and make his own dinner.

On one particularly uneventful day in the local park, Mother Nature was seriously questioning how much she actually cared for the wellbeing of the metaphysical universe. It seemed unfair that while _some_ spirits could waltz around with the easiest of jobs and cushiest of solitary lifestyles, arguably the strongest and prickliest of all the spirits had to endure being continually slimed on by a human child.

She was sat, back straight and scarred palms loose in her lap, cross-legged in the grass of the park, her stormcloud of hair stirring in the gentle breezes that brushed her skin consolingly. A squirrel had fallen asleep in her lap and various beetles and insects were warring amongst her toes. A bird, shiny dark eyes bright, perched on her shoulder.

Opposite her, sat the child, and her mother.

Mrs Bennett was oblivious to the presence of the third, of course, although she would later think to herself how much good being out in the fresh air had done her. Why, she felt positively young again, as if life was thrilling through every cell in her body.

Sophie however very much was, and occasionally presented the picture she was scribbling onto the poor, flayed and treated skin of a tree to the tall, aloof woman, who nodded with a magisterial air that somewhat covered her obvious awkwardness.

“Look!” ordered the presumptuous child, shoving the wilting paper, scrawled with wobbly, blurry lines towards Mother Nature. The gap-toothed smile grinned broadly, expecting praise.

Mother Nature stared at the mess. Was she supposed to lie? “It's hideous,” she said flatly.

Sophie's face crumpled, and she sniffled. A flashback shot through Mother Nature's mind – of the child's tears determinedly watering her leg when Mother Nature had attempted to leave that day on the porch – and suddenly, the fearsome and ancient nature spirit was lying as convincingly as any daycare assistant, feigned, awkward smile too.

“I'm sure... with a lot of practice, you could improve to make something even faintly understandable?” Mother Nature tried.

Sophie sniffed alarmingly.

“Very good, dear,” lied Mrs Bennett cheerfully, evidently assuming the 'Look!' had been directed at her. Never did Mother Nature feel so great a solidarity with one of her children as in that moment, as they both worked together to stop the imminent tears.

“Many human artists draw like two year olds,” Mother Nature said wisely, “I'm sure you would fit right in.”

Mrs Bennett was opting for the meaningless platitudes route, which didn't appear to be doing too impressively. Finally, frustrated with the lack of progress and irritated with herself, Mother Nature cupped her hands and blew out a butterfly.

Instantly, Sophie was entranced. Wide-eyed, she watched the delicate creature flutter, landing on Mother Nature's knee and fanning its glossy, cream and pale gold wings. When Sophie reached for it, it took off, spiralling into the warm, sunny sky to find a nearby flower.

Sophie beamed at Mother Nature, who breathed a silent sigh of relief.

If she had known that just next week, Sophie would be getting herself into insurmountable danger in the Guardian of Hope's Warren, she might have been less lenient. However, even Mother Nature could not know what was to come.

 


	3. Chapter 3

The soft scratching of Sophie's pencil on the clean sheet of her sketchbook, cleverly hidden underneath the school desk, was almost inaudible to her, she was so used to hearing it. Unfortunately, it was not so for everyone else.

Matt Marks, who sat next to her, squinted down at the drawing, frowning in boyish arrogance to cover confusion. Any distraction was better than the maths scrawled over the whiteboard. "What's'it 'pposed to be?" he whispered, and Sophie glared at him from underneath choppy blonde bangs.

"The Sandman, obviously," she snapped, returning her attention to the yellow, blobby-ish shape she was attempting to shade in a somewhat sandy texture.

The yellowish blob did not look very much like a Sandman, Sophie agreed privately, but in her defence, she'd never seen him close-up, and Jamie's descriptions were vague and coloured with references to Jack Frost. Sophie liked Jack Frost too, of course, but Jamie was never any good at remembering any of the _other_ spirits save Jack, in excruciating detail. When she got cross with him, Jamie would always be faintly embarrassed and apologetic - remembering spirits, he said, was like trying to squeeze slippery soap in the shower. The real image shot away, and you were left with the faintest impressions of what they had been. Besides, he'd tack on, it had been eight years since he'd seen any of them. "If it hadn't been for you, Soph, asking me about it, I'd probably have forgotten all about it," he joked, but there was worry in his eyes.

Sophie saw spirits an awful lot, though in half-remembrances, and only ever when she walked with Mother Nature, which was rare enough. Jamie was envious of her, and stuck between awed and disbelieving when Sophie described the adventures she went on with her mysterious benefactor, Mother Nature. Jamie ascribed those to simply being Sandman's dreams, too jealous to think of his baby sister being picked for magical adventures while he had to stay at home and study for college.

Hoping to catch a glimpse of the Sandman, Sophie had stayed up late for the past few nights, but all it had gained her was sleepless bags under her eyes and a sour mood. Ordinary people, Jamie explained, couldn't see the spirits unless they expected to, unless they believed that they would be there. You had to be concentrating on it, he said, and it was hard to get the hang of, Sophie shouldn't worry. She was still young, still in the Guardians' age bracket, she was bound to see something eventually.

But Sophie knew she wasn't ordinary. Mother Nature had said it often enough. And how could she be, on those nights when Mother Nature's blood pounded too strongly through Sophie's veins, and she'd be forced out of bed to the windowsill, suffocated by the walls, the dead things humans crammed in their homes, gasping at the fresh, living air like she was a fish back in a water she'd never known she'd lost. These episodes happened fairly frequently - walking down the hallway, and the colours started to bleed out of the human dead things and light in the vibrant patterns of the curling breeze, exploding with potential, when the plants and the soil seemed to whisper to her and it was all Sophie could do to not run screaming from the claustrophobic trap of the school walls, bury her feet in the soil and let the wind comb her hair, to take to the winds and _fly and fly and fly like a free thing, like a wild thing -_

But Sophie could not fly.

Sometimes, the disappointment, the longing for wings so she could just _get out_ overwhelmed her, and she'd break down sobbing in the middle of the classrooms, pressing her palms to the glass of the window and watching the birds circle and taunt her with their chirruping voices, a symphony of sympathy for their wingless sister.

The schools told her that she was different too, but that was a different written in official looking reports and stamped with accompanying aides that spied on her and followed her wherever she went. They didn't seem to understand that sometimes Sophie just had to get out. Get out of school, get out of her body, get out into the spirit world where the air shimmered with fantastic things and magic long-forgotten.

It was a bittersweet thing. As far as Sophie knew, she was the only one who could do it - close her eyes, open her mind, and slip, sideways and beneath just a little, then open her eyes and not be tethered to her body anymore, and somehow in the filter of the spirit-world, laid like fine cellophane over normal reality.

Mother Nature forbade Sophie from doing it whenever she wasn't there, but that only made Sophie want to do it more. Only the knowledge that anything could happen to her body whilst she wasn't in it stayed her from living forever in the spirit world, chasing frost trails and dancing under sand-webs and pouncing on the slick, slippery shadows.

Even as Sophie thought, her gaze drawn to the window in her absent-mindedness, a single butterfly fluttered past, borne by gusts of tender wind. The first time, she almost missed it, but then abruptly the kiss of the butterfly's wings against the panes of glass thrummed like a drumbeat behind her heart, and Sophie's head jerked up so fast she jolted in her chair, the sketchbook sliding out of her lap and falling to the floor in a rain of pages.

"Sophie?" asked her teacher, half-starting towards her, a frown beginning on his face, and Sophie felt sweat slide down the back of her neck as the fabric of his clothes seemed to drain and fold inwards, useless and sagging like lumps of shapeless dead cloth, and the wood of the desk under her hands wept for its roots, and the classroom began to sing of past times, living times. An ache formed under her heart, and Sophie felt her world unravel at the seams; she had to concentrate to keep the ties to her body together.

Matt Marks' face blurred away, replaced with a flickering, burning candle, green fire that blazed and throbbed through her, and Sophie wondered, with streams bubbling from her lips and volcanoes mounting in her ears, if she should warn everyone that they were faceless, that they carried candles in their heads, those greedy ants crawling over her skin and bones and raping the flesh from her, cracking her open for the marrow and leaving the wounds to fester.

A vague, alien distaste hung somewhere, like commands shouted though the end of an echoing tunnel. An unfurling map of thoughts, of presence and knowledge, began to hiss at the other end of the tunnel, thoughts that crept slow and gravid like the change of seasons, the deep ponderings of winterbound trees, the unbothered crush of grass stems under a cheetah's paw. And they breathed; _"child, my child, your mother calls."_

Sophie bolted.

She thought that maybe she shouted some excuse over her shoulder, a garbled _"I'm gonna hurl!"_ , but all she could hear was the bang of the closing classroom door, the thudding of her feet on the floor, never fast enough - so thick and heavy like running in bags of sand and cement! The pounding of Mother Nature's heartbeat was close, and Sophie followed it senselessly, falling over once or twice and picking herself up with scraped knees and scabbed hands. The town passed in a blur of honking car horns and angry exclamations, and then Sophie hit the open woods, trees like stately pillars and the interlocking web of branches written in a language she knew how to read once.

She skidded to a stop, sprays of pine needles everywhere and butterflies swarming down from the sky, where clouds gathered. The birds cried out with joy, and the snuffles of animals increased - here a hare, there a fox, now a small deer - and the insects of the ground rose up, and the butterflies flew down, and it began to coalesce into a shape.

She was tall, towering, garbed in her scars and roughened brown dirt skin, like an Amazonian warrior with ice and jungles in her heart, the billows of black night clothing her head and leaves webbing directly from her skin, the world taking root in her ribcage and the crack of her cruel smile the breath of the world. Her eyes, when she opened them, were the sun shining behind new fresh leaves. And when she spoke, her voice twisted through the ache in Sophie's core, the lines of herself messed in her child, where every other wore a candle of their Mother's love in their minds Sophie was consumed with that aching fire, a terrible blessing and curse. She had a heart that sang the song of the storm-witch without the ripple of the clouds' music in her ears.

Mother Nature's eyebrow quirked. "I'd say that America can stand a strong headwind today," she said, and Sophie shrieked with joy.

"Let's go flying!" she begged, jumping forward and barely aware that her body crumpled behind her, fast asleep with a peaceful smile on its face, because she was in the world of spirits now, and Mother Nature was catching her. Touching her always gave Sophie a tremendous thrill - Mother Nature had lightning under her skin and thunder in her bones, and that lonely splintered part of Mother Nature's core inside Sophie begged to be freed.

Mother Nature grinned, and crouched; Sophie could feel her muscles gathering and bunching in preparation. Then she leapt, and the wind caught them, screaming with joy as it hurled them high into the air, Burgess dropping away like a tiny toy-town far beneath them. It was cold this high in the sky, but Sophie breathed in the cold, let it grow inside her, and Mother Nature's smile tinged with pride.

Tumbling on the winds and guarded by Mother Nature's hawklike eye, Sophie laughed herself breathless with joy and relief. The birds darted around her, singing songs of welcome, and she sang right back. She was not quite as fluent in birdspeak as Mother Nature was, but the echo of their aligned cores was enough to give her notions, ideas.

Sophie whooped and screamed with delight, fearless when she rode with the impervious Witch of Storms, who sailed imperiously beside Sophie's tumbling body. Mother Nature commanded the bucking clouds and straining winds with the total ease of a woman who expected complete obedience, and the world fell over itself to show submission.

All living things shuddered in her wake, the storms she rode working themselves out in a frenzy of exultation at her touch, at her presence, and Sophie stared in awe as all manner of seeds and dandelion heads and new life whirled up in eddies around them, keeping safe to their callous mother's breast. They stung her skin like tiny bullets and tangled in Mother Nature's whips of snapping black hair, which fanned out in severe lines behind them. As they passed, seeds dripped with rainwater, fell into the eager embrace of soil fertilised by the Mother's throbbing core as she swept overhead, germinated and poked shy seedlings to nod at her creation.

 _I'm free, I'm free,_ thought Sophie. The wind wiped the tears before they could fall. Confusion and worry emanated from Mother Nature, and Sophie felt despair in her heart - because how could she explain what it was like to be trapped to a creature that knew nothing but wildness and freedom? What creature could refuse Mother Nature, who beat in the breast of every living thing? It was sometimes difficult to remember that Mother Nature was nothing so limited as human.

"I wish I had wings," she said instead, because this was something Mother Nature could understand, "I wish I could do this all the time."

The wind whistled sadly, and some of the joy fell in Mother Nature's face, or perhaps it was just that her eyes shuttered, wary, guarded, once hurt and now thirty-times as shy. "You do not, child," she replied, "I indulge you enough!"

"Yes," said Sophie. She feared losing this too much to protest, though the longing for her own freedom ached all wrong-shaped in the angles of the connection they shared, a dissonance in the melody of Mother Nature's core.

Her brow creased with upset, and all at once stormclouds threatened. The clouds swelled with rain, and the vapour clung to Sophie's clothes, encasing her in a shell of ice. The wind moaned in terrible fury, and Mother Nature's eyes shone green like chips of fire-hardened emerald. Immediately, her mercurial mood flipped - from joy at seeing her closest daughter, to righteous fury, and Sophie felt the weak human parts of her quail and quiver.

"You wish to see why?" she thundered, "Well - let me show you!" Her hand caught like a vice around Sophie's wrist, and suddenly the wind drove against them with bone-breaking force, the mustering storm bucking like wild horses. A dangerous ecstasy bubbled in Sophie's heart, tasted of adrenaline and addiction at her lips, and had she time enough to shout words before the wind tore the breath from her, they would be _"faster!"_

Fear never seemed to occur to her properly when she was with Mother Nature. The fury, the rage, the tempestuous moods that changed as quickly as it took for a butterfly to flap its wings - it all felt normal, good, right. She never feared that any harm would be done to her, either, and sometimes, when she was back in her own body and reminiscing on the times they'd shared, a horrible anxiety fell over her, and Sophie would think, _"She almost killed me. I almost died!"_

It was never enough to keep Sophie away.

They were going somewhere hot, Sophie could see flashes of jade green and sprawling vines far below them, hear the creak and rumble of falling trees and pierced leaves as the storm swept overhead. The songs of the birds changed, unfamiliar to Sophie, and the whisking seed-heads caught up in their wake were of different plants. A gleam of rose winked in the horizon, dizzying cliffs rising sharply in the distance, shaggy with crawling green vines. Concealed in the bruising darkness of the greyish black clouds, Sophie was tossed about like a ragdoll, so much spare chaff in the face of Mother Nature's alien rage.

Excitement replaced any caution, and Sophie grinned with the feral joy these things gave her, though her carefully brushed blonde bangs were in matts around her face and her face was streaked and smeared with whirling dirt. Some part of her not taken up in mindlessly revelling in the speed, the ferocity of the storm they rode wondered where they were going, what thing Mother Nature planned to show her.

She did not have to wonder long, because Mother Nature yanked her wrist again, automatically drawing Sophie against her tough, wiry body as suddenly, they plummeted from the sky. Sophie tucked herself firmly against Mother Nature, lest she be torn from the wild woman's grip, grabbing onto Mother Nature's biceps, rigid with muscles and raised with scar tissue that did not bother with being pretty. Sophie tasted ozone on the back of her tongue.

She hurtled towards the ground, useless winds snagging at her clothes, tears snatched from her eyes and breath torn from her mouth before she could breathe. It was nothing like the playful games she and Mother Nature enjoyed sometimes, when Mother Nature pretended to drop her, gentle winds cradling her and keeping her in a safe parameter near Mother Nature's direct control. Tears were streaming out of her eyes and her sight was blurred from speed, her breath compressed in her chest. Panic seized her; Sophie could not breathe, she was going to _suffocate-_

This was real, it was brutal, and it was terrifying.

They landed with the crash of an earthquake, rumbling over the earth as plates shifted and sighed at their Mother's touch. The plants and bushes reached, longingly, to drape their dark green leaves over their bodies, hiding them from view. They were plunged into the absolute darkness of a jungle floor-level, the drumming of rain blocked by the thick leaves, the squelch of rotting plant matter sinking Mother Nature in up to her calves, insects and dark things squirming out of the soil to hurriedly greet her.

Sophie, now able to finally breathe, wanted to ask why they were here, but before she could, a rough dark palm slapped over her mouth, and Mother Nature hunkered down in the shielding of the leaves, the dark clouds of her hair lowering to press around them, making them all but invisible in the eerie, warm darkness of the jungle.

Mother Nature appeared to be waiting for something, her whole body taut with expectation, and something like regret and fear in her eyes. She knew she had been rash; but there was no turning back now.

A dim crash of tree boughs startled Sophie, straining to hear the signs of any coming. There was an ungodly, almost human shriek, and then abruptly the leaves overhead were wrenched away and a body fell through, landing with a skid of mulchy leaves and much cursing.

Sophie's eyes went round and wide with wonder, and her mouth dropped open behind Mother Nature's palm, despite the threat that a bug would crawl in there.

It was a woman, a woman covered all over with glossy feathers. She picked herself up from the ground with movements not quite human, sharp and wary, rising to her full - rather short - height and fanning iridescent wings. She had obviously inhuman eyes, deep lavender, like Oriental silks, and all around her there was a gentle aura of trust and warmth.

In an instant, Sophie's wonder turned to ashes - the woman was hurt. One of the beautiful, shimmering wings had a sharp, ugly tear, some sort of reddish liquid that might have been blood splattering the leaves whenever the woman moved. She instantly knew that Mother Nature had shot her down from the sky purely for the purpose of showing Sophie, and guilt squirmed in her gut.

"Girls?" the feathered woman called anxiously, "Are you okay?"

There was a muffled cheeping from underneath some of the leaves, and the feathered woman darted forwards, uncovering what looked like small, jewelled birds, who settled gratefully along her arms and shoulders. The feathered woman looked around grimly, something harsher tempering the motherliness and warmth in her eyes.

"I suppose we're walking back," she said, and stretched the injured wing, stopping with a harsh gasp of pain and staggering against a tree.

Mother Nature shifted behind her, and Sophie felt something strange emanating from the connection they shared, an awkward sort of heartache, guilt and shame and prickling, uncomfortable feelings that came from bruised hearts and broken wishes. Mother Nature's face dropped against Sophie's shoulder, suddenly childlike in her wish to hide.

"Tooth," Sophie whispered. The woman was familiar - Sophie knew her, had vague thoughts of sundrenched stones and bloody teeth. She wracked her memory, but could dredge up no more.

"Queen Toothiana," Mother Nature corrected, near-silently, something vulnerable in her voice, "Guardian of Memories and collector of children's teeth."

Sophie inhaled. She was looking at the Tooth Fairy. Jamie had talked about her - she was one of the Guardians!

Sophie wanted to run out, greet her, ask her a thousand questions, but she was also intensely aware of Mother Nature at her side, who was so tense Sophie imagined her tendons snapping under the strain, as if she expected to be hit at any moment. That confusing tumult of emotions continued to seep down their link, and Sophie began to feel quite uncomfortable; she began to wish that Toothiana would just hurry up and walk away.

Eventually, Toothiana did - though it was a slow, wary progression of limping painfully, struggling not to jar her injured wing. Sophie hoped she would be okay once she reached wherever she was going, but if she really was a Guardian, Sophie doubted that she was in any danger at all from the denizens of the jungle. Once she was finally gone, Sophie began wriggling in Mother Nature's arms. Her leg was beginning to cramp.

Mother Nature didn't release her for a while, still and immoveable as granite, until whatever prescience she had told her that Tooth was long gone.

Sophie bounded out of her arms into the clearing made by Tooth's fall, stretching happily. She turned to share her excitement with Mother Nature, but her heart sank instead.

Mother Nature was still crouched furtively, lurking in the green darkness of the leaves. She looked unsure, even a little frightened, and her arms were crossed painfully tight around her midsection, as if she needed to hold herself together to stop herself from falling apart.

It was jarring to see her like this - insecure, not arrogant in her confidence, complete in her power, and Sophie didn't know what to do to make it better.

"Who was she?" she asked, instead, and Mother Nature trembled against the tree.

"The last little girl I gave wings," she replied, in a very small voice, and Sophie swallowed.

"Oh." She hesitated. "Do you... Do you not like each other?"

Mother Nature's eyes gleamed in the darkness, and then she stood, whirling into a flurry of activity. "I had to do it," she said, breathlessly, stormily, a world of raw hurt and anger underneath, as if all these words had crowded up inside her over the years and now she couldn't wait to get them out. "I offered her the same deal I offered all the Sisters of Flight. She was a child - I gave her the tools she needed to survive. Wings, to get away from predators, feathers, for warmth, claws and birdspeak... I let her survive-!"

"She was going to die if you didn't give her wings?" Sophie repeated meekly. "But... why?"

"She was being hunted, by a monkey-king - my fault again, I should have killed him-" Mother Nature snarled, pacing to and fro, "But how was I supposed to know he would go after her?"

"You couldn't," said Sophie, sensing now that she was nothing more than a blank audience to Mother Nature at this point.

"I saved her life," Mother Nature repeated, and there was a little bit of plaintiveness in her voice, mostly anger. "She is so ungrateful! Who cares if you're the only one of your kind -"

"I don't understand," said Sophie, and Mother Nature gave her a terribly haunted look.

"I had to take something from her to give her something, that's the way it works," she explained quickly, "You saw her - neither bird nor human, and infertile to both. I took children from her, and she learned to hate me for it. It was why she joined the Guardians - children are Toothiana's passion." She came at once close to Sophie, and knelt, and clutched her elbows in her hands. Sophie, held in that strange grip, swallowed and looked into Mother Nature's fiery eyes.

"I will not have you hate me, child," she said, harsh and bitter, "for something that you asked me for."

Sophie looked at the badly-hidden hurt in Mother Nature's eyes, the anger that pretended to cover it, and knew that no matter how badly she wanted to be free, how badly she wanted to taste and own the skies for herself... she would not ask again.

"...I understand," said Sophie, softly, and then because she knew that Mother Nature would never do it of her own will, she leaned forward and hugged her, so that with her face hidden, Mother Nature could let her pain show.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Sophie began with careful pencil lines, very faint, very light, sketching the barest outline of prominent features. Then directly over that scant guide, she began painting, pausing to rub out her guidelines where the paler colours threatened to smudge. The dark browns were first, careful gaps left white that were later threaded through with green unfolding leaves. It was a face rapidly taking shape, a familiar face that Sophie had seen many times before over the years.

She knew in perfect detail the scar that wandered over Mother Nature's rugged cheek, and the raised, shiny skin of a burn on her right shoulder. She knew the calluses on her rough hands and the zigzag scars that split her thighs, from generations of wild cats kneading her flesh with sharp claws before it had toughened into the leathery hide it was today. She sketched thick feet that had walked bare over the snows of Siberia and the jungles of Brazil, the multitude of ugly scrapes around her ankles from innumerable snares left hidden under leaves and snow piles that Mother Nature had been caught in. There were snakebites marching down her spine, spiderbites pimpling her forearms, birds' nests in her hair and a centipede crawling over the shell of her ear. A bat nestled in her lap and a worm made an anklet with one of its brothers – Mother Nature's children and Mother Nature's creation gentle and loving, secure in the embrace of their matriarch.

"Wow, Soph," said Jamie from the bed, glancing up from his phone. "She looks... she looks a bit fierce." He looked a bit closer, and then pulled a disgusted face. "Is that bugs crawling over her? Gross! She'd look much prettier if you took those out."

"She likes bugs more than she likes human beauty standards," Mother Nature's dry voice snarked from the other end of the room, and Sophie privately smiled at the painting, choosing not to comment.

Jamie could not see Mother Nature, but Mother Nature had no intention of stopping her unheard part of the conversation, choosing to add vitriolic comments to whatever Jamie had said. Privately, Sophie was rather glad Jamie couldn't hear her insults.

Mother Nature was not conventionally pretty, but Sophie didn't think that mattered. She had the beauty of a well-made and luxurious weapon, sharp edges and designed for cruelty, but decorated with intricate care that belied its crude task. She was not the sort of woman that Sophie's brother would fall in love with, but Sophie thought that was right, too - Mother Nature had the incredible, inhumane wonder of a particularly well-designed torture weapon, but you'd have to be insane to fall in love with one.

Sophie moved on to sketching the surroundings, placing a small butterfly in the painted Mother Nature's cupped hands. The painting was done in soft, dark light, which gave it an oddly intimate effect, that coupled with the slight smile on the harsh, thin lips, made Mother Nature, so unapproachable and chilly, look gentle and warm. Motherly.

Mother Nature came up behind her, rising from her place on the window-sill, half hanging out to taste the winds that rushed by. She peered over Sophie's shoulder curiously, tilting her head to watch as Sophie outlined her familiar features in bold brushstrokes.

Her dark hair was nearly hanging in the paint, and without bothering to ask, Sophie flipped the offending lock out of the way over Mother Nature's shoulder, paying no attention to her stiffened spine of surprise at the casual contact. This close, she smelled of rain and fresh winds, a pleasant alternative to the acrid smell of the paint.

Sophie had been painting this one for a while. Sketch-references and practice samples had prepared her for transferring it onto the easel she'd recently got for her eleventh birthday; by this point, she knew the steps of the picture almost by heart. It was a familiar monotony, outlining the darkish greens in Mother Nature's voluminous hair, adding more detail to the bark of the tree that rose tall in the background, branches spread out and hanging over the scene like embracing arms.

She liked to think of Mother Nature like this the most. Mother Nature was cruel sometimes and Sophie often felt like she refused to understand rather than being unable to. She had a hatred for humans - understandably, thought Sophie, thinking of all the climate change that had happened as a direct result of human pollution, but in a way that diametrically opposed that, she was kind and although unrelentingly sarcastic, gentle with Sophie and her limitations. Sophie liked to think that Mother Nature cared for her, and she supposed there was evidence enough to support it. She'd never been in any real danger while adventuring with her, and Mother Nature never seemed to treat her company like a chore.

The thoughts made her smile as she worked, and Mother Nature sniffed, perturbed by the image Sophie was presenting. She drew back and looked down at her own body, barely covered in leaves that rooted directly from her pores, pitted all over with scars and imperfections, rough and battleworn.

Where she hadn't been burned and warped by years of being trapped in the inferno heart of a star, the pregnancy of the world had devastated the rest. Her animals had clawed the flesh from her bones to feed themselves and left behind ringing scars, her plants had shattered ribcages and burst her organs to meet the sunlight.

The dawning of the world had been the most painful era she could imagine, and it had changed her from the young soft nubile girl she'd been before she'd been trapped in that star to the hardy, lean and fearsome woman she was now - bitter and broken and ready to fight to the last breath if it meant protecting her children for one more night.

The rosy, tender woman that Sophie was painting in the picture was like a complete stranger to her.

She touched the hard line of her own scowl, her sulky lips, her hollow cheekbones, prominent nose and dark eyebrows. Sophie had not erased her scars, had not ignored her past sufferings or made sweet her darker parts - she was there, all there. But something nagged at Mother Nature, something unfamiliar.

"That is not me," she said, eventually, still struggling to name what was so jarring about it.

"Of course it is," said Sophie, softly enough that Jamie couldn't hear. "See, you're even holding a butterfly."

"I don't... I don't do that," Mother Nature insisted strangely.

"I've seen you do it a thousand times before," said Sophie, confused. "You're always so gentle with them."

Mother Nature was silent, studying the picture intently. It had the marks of being drawn by an eleven year old - albeit, a talented eleven year old - certainly, but it was more than that. Sophie had, in all the ways, attempted to draw Mother Nature exactly as she was.

With the slippery nature of spirits, that was a difficult thing to achieve. Mother Nature had been drawn before, of course - was known by many names of varying importance. But in all of those depictions the artist had only remembered the things they had thought important about her, from local harvest goddesses with sheafs of wheat to Gaia-images of wide-hipped women with the world growing in their stomachs.

But all of these things were what they thought were important about the image of Mother Nature, not the whole bare truth of herself as it was. Scars, bugs, hallmarks of an ancient race of Golden Age humans in her features that matched no standard "Earth" ethnicity, scowls and all.

"This is how you see me?" she said, quietly, looking again at the no doubt fierce and harsh stance of the woman in the painting, yet quite clearly also protective and motherly towards the tiny little butterfly.

Sophie cocked her head. "I suppose," said the girl, "That's what you look like to me. You blow down the houses of innocent people because you feel like it, but you care about the death of every ant too. I don't think that... uh, cruelty and kindness can't exist at the same time."

Mother Nature snorted. "Kind? Not in a way that makes a difference to any humans." She spat the word human, remembering with the ache of eczema across her shin the droughts spreading over the world from human gases.

In a small voice, Sophie replied, "You saved me. That makes a difference, even if its just a small one to you, to everyone I know. And it makes a difference to you too, even though you'll never admit it." She grinned at Mother Nature, who harrumphed and muttered something about annoying ape-children who got too uppity.

However, when Sophie turned back to the painting, Mother Nature found herself studying the girl for any signs of anything immediately different. She scowled in confusion when there was nothing. "You are not like most humans," she muttered, and Sophie giggled, ignoring Jamie's odd look.

"I'm just a normal girl," she said airily, "But I've got an opportunity to talk back when you say something and butterflies in my head, that's all."

 


	5. Chapter 5

Mother Nature was busy. She didn't have time to spend her last waking moment hanging over Sophie. Sophie was probably very low on her list of priorities, considering that Mother Nature was in charge of a world, and all.

It had still been a few years, though, since Mother Nature had dropped by for anything more than a hurried chat and a quick frolic in the clouds. It sounded stupid, but... Sophie missed her.

She told herself that it was selfish and childish to expect that Mother Nature would remember to go see Sophie all the time. She did her best to concentrate on the rest of her life, trying to make friends and control the itch to get out, get away by herself. 

At least her grades in school had improved a bit.

Nonetheless, Sophie was getting tired of bleak Pennsylvania. She knew every inch of the woods by now, had drawn Jack's pond so many times it was practically engraved in her mind's eye. So when a school geography trip (geography, unsurprisingly, was one of Sophie's favourite lessons - she loved nothing more than trying to figure out all of Mother Nature's secret machinations, possibly glimpse at what she was doing when she wasn't with Sophie) was proposed, she jumped at the chance.

It wasn't much; they weren't even leaving the state. But Sophie still pressed herself to the window and stared as the landscape melted and changed around them, to that ugly roadside sandy scrub, hard-packed dirt and spindly, hastily planted trees. The sky was faintly overcast, leaving the watery sunlight grey-tinted, and the rattling bus wheezed and groaned, juddering unpleasantly every time the driver applied the brakes. It stank strongly of sweaty teenagers, and brightly coloured crisp packets and sweetie wrappers crunched under Sophie's trainers whenever she put her feet down on the gum-pasted floor.

She'd taken her travelling pills well before they left, knowing full well that the claustrophobia of a squeaky, closed in bus with its thick, plasticky windows was exactly the sort of thing to trigger one of the... butterfly moments. Therefore, she felt fully permitted to stare in mild disgust at some of the green faces of her pasty fellow students, clutching onto the electric blue and red striped bus chairs. 

Sophie sank low into her seat, grateful that at least her neighbour had decided to plug herself into her headphones early on. Humans, thought Sophie, really were repellent creatures.

She smiled a little. Mother Nature would be proud of her for thinking that.

The spiky tops of a forest loomed low and greenish in the distance, and Sophie's breath smudged the glass as she shoved her forehead into it, wishing that she could breathe in the fresh, piny scent. She missed forests. Sweeping canyons too, hilly cliffs, rainy, rolling green hills, the crash and suck of the sea, heavily laden palms sinking over pale sand, bubbly marshes and fresh green swamps with insects humming, remembering them all gave her an aching sort of nostalgia.

The dappled shade brushed the bus, providing some relief from the dour heat inside. Sophie stared into the forest - what was left of it - in horror. It was evidently in the process of being cleared, for weeping stumps were interspersed regularly with twisted hulks of nettle patches, and Sophie could see machine tracks pressed into the soft, exposed loam.

Without knowing, she knew that the forest was likely in terrible pain. 

Sophie's heart ached, and before she stopped to consider what she was doing, she closed her eyes and fell.

A sharp yank left her stumbling onto the splintered, stony ground, as the bus roared on with her body still inside. A profound ache lingered in her sternum, and Sophie held a hand to her stomach with a wince. That had to be one of the roughest transitions she'd had for a little while. Next time, don't try jumping out of a bus at speed, Sophie thought to herself irritably, and picked herself up off the floor.

Brushing dirt and gravel off her clothes, Sophie looked around with the unveiled eyes of a spirit. She could practically see the trees' tears, hear their cries in the creaking knock of branch on branch, termite-riddled wood crumbling through. Cautiously, she picked her way through the desolation, keeping her eyes sharp for any signs of another spirit. Destruction and anguish like this tended to attract the dark sort, and Sophie didn't particularly feel like being eaten alive for Mother Nature's essence inside her.

She sat down beside a stump, resting her hand on the rough, splintered wood. The fallen tree ached and groaned, the whispers of its pain barely audible to Sophie. 

"I'm sorry," she said to no one in particular, feeling rather helpless. She wasn't Mother Nature - she couldn't fix this. She could only feel the faint echoes of pain.

There was a squeak from somewhere above her head, and Sophie blinked to see a little grey squirrel crouched there, peering at her with beady dark eyes. It tilted its head and chittered, fluffy tail puffing up.

"Hello," Sophie called to it. Her squirrel was quite good, actually, since there were quite a lot in the woods near where she lived. 

The squirrel blinked. "Mother?" it asked, and Sophie smiled a little sadly.

"No, sorry. Just Sophie."

"Well, Just Sophie, have you come here to help us?" asked the squirrel, and Sophie's smile fell.

"I can't." 

The squirrel's nose twitched. "What a load of tripe," it muttered, "You have a body, don't you? There!"

"Pardon?" Sophie thought maybe she should be a little more offended and slightly less confused, but for the life of her she couldn't figure out what the squirrel meant. 

The squirrel's nose twitched again, and it peered about slightly sheepishly. "Don't tell Mother I said this."

Sophie frowned, curious. "Said what?"

The squirrel stood up taller. "You don't have to be a magical wizard or an earth mother or a spirit to make a difference in the way she runs this world. Even the littlest butterfly can cause storms if it beats its wings hard enough."

"What do you mean?"  Sophie demanded, tired of hearing metaphors, and the squirrel fluffed its tail in annoyance.

"Ape, it is not that hard!" it squeaked angrily. "Ey-ey, I don't have time to babysit you. Figure it out!" Cryptic message delivered, it bounded off into the desolate trees, the branches shaking with its quick passage.

Sophie shook her head and settled back against the stump. Clearly, she'd have to work on her squirrel speak. 

It was peaceful to be like this, in the world of spirits with Mother Nature's heartbeat thudding slowly through the soil she sat on, in the wind that brushed her face, sending the pump of earthen things through Sophie's blood. Sophie's blonde hair fluttered evenly over her lips as she breathed, and she closed her eyes, sank into a somnolent half-sleep, her awareness spreading and meshing against Mother Nature's more than it ever had before.

Feelings, thoughts, sights and sounds and smells, began to seep through their link like sneaky water through a dam. Sophie felt the stretch and pull of Mother Nature's muscles under her skin as she loped through somewhere sunny and hot, grass swaying in the breeze, yellow splashes of colour, the burn of a hot sun and the irritating tugging on some of Mother Nature's more inflexible scars, droplets of blood and sap running down one toned thigh from a torn open scar on her hip. 

Her feet drummed on hard packed, withered brown soil, plumes of dust rising in her wake. Water bubbled under the earth, but reluctantly, and Sophie, after some intense thought, decided that Mother Nature was probably trying to draw it up from the earth, to rehydrate the pebbly, dry lakebed and allow life to flourish here again.

Underneath Mother Nature's concentration, a seething hatred and rage roiled, like a poisonous sea. This dark, brutal hate was focused all one thing - the nearby village of humans, who had, in their infinite wisdom, polluted the nearby lakebeds so much that they had turned into stagnant swamps, then drained them. Now the area had bleached of all life under the stare of the sun, creating yet another lifeless blot.

Hideous thoughts brewed in the murk of Mother Nature's oil-soaked, fume-maddened mind, and for the first time, Sophie found herself understanding that Mother Nature was not so much of her own person anymore, rather more an avatar for the earth, burying what was left of her own humanity deep into the core of the earth along with the story of many of her nastiest scars. 

It struck Sophie as rather sad.

Yet, for all her pretending, Sophie saw something else too, a thirst for vengeance. A human trait, fallible and selfish. Mother Nature was not nature at all, not all of it, she only spoke for it.

It was bizarrely difficult to make sense of, every first revelation at odds to the second one. She wondered how long Mother Nature had been pushing away the human side of her in favour of pretending to be a instructable, mercurial voice-of-the-earth.

Sophie gathered her strength and prodded at Mother Nature, who missed a step and recovered admirably quickly. A flurry of answering thought came back, untranslateable but for greeting-confusion-weariness. Why was Sophie calling her? Concern, now, faint and distant, but enough to make Sophie's heart warm. Was Sophie injured?

All-fine, Sophie pushed back, then retreated in herself and opened her eyes, trying her best to show Mother Nature what she was seeing - the tortured tree stumps, the hacked off branches.

Sorrow and heartbreak welled instantly, and Sophie felt rather than heard Mother Nature's tortured scream. Pain echoed between them, and before Sophie could adjust, Mother Nature's mind abruptly fractured and disappeared.

Sophie quickly pulled away before she could be sucked into following her. She knew well enough she would not survive if she tried to connect as fully with the earth as Mother Nature did - it would be all too easy to lose herself and her sanity in its deep streams.

Sophie opened her eyes and blinked just as Mother Nature coalesced out of butterflies, stumbling to her knees and gasping as if she had been shot. Her skin and body adapted to match its environment, and the leaves she had been wearing flaked off and withered, sharp, infrequent little stabs of pine needles remaining instead. She was crying, an instinctual reaction not so much out of sorrow, rainwater flowing down her cheeks and fertilising the soil, but although the seeds in her hair were germinating and growing in seconds it was nothing compared to the greater loss of a forest.

Sophie thought about how many football pitches of forest were cut down every day and wondered what it must feel like to watch one's children be mercilessly slaughtered in their thousands every day.

Sophie crouched down next to Mother Nature and crawled into her lap, unbothered by Mother Nature's mostly-nudity. She had known her for too long to be bothered by such unimportant things as natural bodies. 

Mother Nature hugged Sophie and pressed her face into her hair, her tears soaking it almost instantly, shaking with the force of her sorrow. An awkward ache made itself known sympathetically in Sophie's heart, a wrong-shaped piece where the forest's life had been torn out, gutted to bleed out.

"I hate them, I hate them," Mother Nature choked, "I hate them, I hate them!"

Her pain was making itself rage, festering rage that was easier to deal with than grief. 

"Why do they need to do this to me? Why are they so selfish? I would burn them all in a day, but they come back - like roaches! I can send a thousand hurricanes and storms to tear down their villages, but they just rebuild them in the same damn place. No one ever listens to me anymore - they'd rather bleed me out and watch me die!"

"I listen to you," said Sophie softly. "I can't be your only believer in the world. And there are people campaigning to stop this from happening."

Mother Nature snorted violently, vitriol in her eyes. "Oh no, they won't, because it doesn't affect your generation, does it? No one cares that every time they hurt me it's a little harder to recover!"

“The children don't think that way. Well, at least it's not their choice to think that way.” Sophie argued. “A lot of young people think that you're important.”

“Children! Everyone's obsessed with children. So I'm not to blame children for listening to their parents, but I can't blame parents because they protect the fucking children!” Mother Nature snarled. “All they'll do is grow up into cynical rapacious monsters like their parents!”

Sophie paused for a while, then reached up and hugged Mother Nature a little tighter. Then she said, “It's hard trying to look for the best in people when all they seem to want to do is hurt you. But there are people that are trying to help you. And not all humans are bad, you said I wasn't.”

Mother Nature snorted, shifting restlessly. Reluctantly, Sophie let go of her, knowing that like all wild things Mother Nature couldn't bear to be penned for long. Instantly, Mother Nature rose to her full height and began pacing, a storm brewing in her eyes and the harsh shape of her mouth. 

“You have a part of me, you're different,” she muttered.

“Not really,” Sophie responded. “Not enough to do anything. All it lets me do is talk to you, because you wouldn’t talk to anyone otherwise.”

Mother Nature harrumphed at that, but didn’t bother to refute the statement; they both knew it was true. Instead, she crouched beside the tree stump and laid her weathered brown palm on the jagged wounds, offering bursts of healing and comfort to the injured tree. The animals of the torn forest clustered around her gratefully, their assorted noises a cacophonous din in the background. She treated them gently, as any mother would.

“Children can’t help the fact they have parents,” Sophie argued, trying again to make Mother Nature understand. Sophie knew that Mother Nature had a legitimate reason to hate humanity, but that didn’t mean that she  _ should.  _ “Parents that sometimes don’t agree with what they thought. I mean, everyone has parents.  _ You  _ probably have parents.”

Mother Nature went ramrod stiff, and the world around them went immediately, devastatingly silent. Sophie halted with words on the tip of her tongue, somehow aware that she’d said something wrong. 

With her body so tense it could have been chiselled from diamond, Mother Nature snarled, “I have no parents.”

Sophie blinked. Then, nervously, she laughed a little. “Well, of course you do. Everyone has to come from somewhere, right?”

Mother Nature plucked a dead leaf from the ground and began aimlessly shredding it between her long fingers. A worm coiled over her knuckle and in an instant she pinched it dead. 

That should have been sign enough that Sophie had hit a nerve.

“I was talking to Jamie the other day,” said Sophie, insistently, “And he told me that all the other spirits had lives before they became… spirits. So - you must have had  _ parents,  _ you must have had a life, maybe you were once a little girl like me-”

“Enough!” thundered Mother Nature, and lightning cracked across the sky, lancing right down and striking a tree not far from them. It burst into flames instantly and Sophie quailed in sudden terror, some deep human instinct warning her that she was in danger. She quivered back against the stump, and Mother Nature rose to her full, towering height, at least seven foot and heavily scarred, the wind picking up with a low, anxious howl, her gimlet eyes sparkling and flashing with nature’s wrath incarnate.

“I am  _ no one!”  _ she shouted, and her voice cracked off the hillsides and rumbled in the rocks. “I have no past! I am  _ Mother Nature  _ and it is  _ all  _ I shall ever be!”

Sophie felt tears of fear in her eyes and her stomach was quivering in terror. She cringed back at Mother Nature’s ferocity, but something iron in her refused to be cowed, remembered all too well the very human side of Mother Nature she so loved to ignore.

And little Sophie stood up and screamed right back, “You’re  _ LYING!” _

Mother Nature stumbled. 

Off-guard, her bright green eyes were wide on Sophie’s - wide with some combination of shock, rage, insult and fear. Her billowing hair seemed to stop mid-ripple and twist in anxious knots, unsure of itself, and the various forest creatures at her feet fell over themselves in surprise, torn between attacking the one who had dared insult Mother Nature’s word, and their own dumbfoundedness.

_ Fear.  _

Mother Nature looked  _ afraid. _

Suddenly, Sophie felt nothing more than very, very tired, and a little guilty. “Look,” she said, wearily, “I get that you don’t like humans because we’re destroying your planet. Most humans don’t like humans either. But you can’t pretend that you’re not one of us.”

Mother Nature flinched bodily at that. “I’m  _ nothing  _ like you,” she hissed, but her voice sounded meek.

Sophie planted her hands on her hips. “Well, so what, you might be a really old spirit-lady but you had a mother and a father and a childhood, you look like us, walk like us, talk like us and think like us. But most importantly, you  _ feel  _ like us. You know, I asked Jamie to ask Jack why I never saw you hanging out with the other spirits. And he said that was because the rest of the world didn’t like you very much.”

Mother Nature looked at the ground and scuffed her feet in the dirt. She folded her arms around her stomach, as if she did not quite know what to do with them, and avoided Sophie’s eyes.

“Now, I’ve known you for - years. You  _ saved  _ my life. And I know that as much as you like to pretend you’ve got the feelings of a stone that you actually enjoy my company and you like having me around. Shut up, shut up - you  _ hugged me back,  _ Mother Nature you never do that,” Sophie interrupted, seeing Mother Nature draw breath to speak.

Mother Nature looked sulky and somewhat petulant. Sophie wondered how often she’d heard this sort of thing.

“The thing is,” Sophie continued, hardly believing she was daring to say all of this, “It’s not like you’re a bad person, or that you’re not fun to know, because you are. Great, that is. It’s just that you’re always so  _ prickly.”  _

The ancient nature spirit bit her lip. A faint, darkish blush was moving steadily up her neck and across her cheeks.

“In all the years we’ve known each other, you hardly let me know anything about you. Mother Nature’s cool and all, but you’re more than that even if you pretend you aren’t. I’ve had enough of the myth, I wanna know the  _ person.  _ I wanna talk to you, know why you’ve got such a hell of a problem with other people. Mother Nature - I don’t even know your  _ name.”  _ Sophie stopped with a huff, and then sat down heavily on the tree stump. 

She half expected to get struck in two by a lightning bolt for her impertinence. Sophie’s mind was a mess of emotion. On one hand, she was terrified and nervous that she had even stood up for this, and wished she’d just let Mother Nature have her tantrum, because what if this meant that Mother Nature never came back, and left Sophie alone in Pennsylvania with a longing for another life and world written in her bones? On the other hand, she was full of a cautious pride at her own guts. She’d called Mother Nature out. She’d refused to bow down the way that everyone else seemed to be, and she’d finally got out those questions that had been festering inside her for  _ years.  _

Mother Nature’s front wasn’t enough for Sophie anymore. It had been brewing for years, spurred on by every hint of surprise when Sophie treated Mother Nature like a multi-faceted human being with human emotions. That stupid painting that Sophie still had hanging on her wall, for one. Mother Nature had told her that Sophie wasn’t like most humans, in seeing a bit more of Mother Nature’s actual personality, but Sophie knew she was wrong. She was just the only human that had ever had a chance to see that without having to cut through twelve layers of fire, brimstone, prickliness and threats of death.

Maybe it was just the curious suspension of fear that happened whenever Sophie was in close proximity with Mother Nature, and some of Mother Nature’s fire ran between their link. Either way, everything she had said needed to have been said. 

Mother Nature seemed unsure of herself. She was fidgeting, uncharacteristically diffident. The silence dragged on, and awkwardness deepened. 

Finally, Mother Nature cleared her throat. “I… I don’t want to be who I was. I tried to leave it all behind. You’re right in saying that no one likes me.” Her voice was gaining strength and the hardness was coming back into her eyes. “But I don’t need them to. I am not who I was and I will never be the same again. As far as I’m concerned, I have no past, and I have no need of a name! Does a mountain grow lonely without a friend? Will a tree wither if it has no name? Does a fox run differently knowing its father was born somewhere else? No! I am those things, nothing more!”

“But you’re not a mountain, or a tree - you’re a person-!” Sophie tried to argue, and in an instant Mother Nature slashed her hand, and the wind roared so mightily around them that it stopped Sophie’s words.

A storm brewed and spilled at once - thunderheads loomed like bruises and rain splattered like hailstone daggers. The weak sun was swallowed by the advent of tar-black clouds blotting out the rest of the world, and lightning tongues forked and flashed, bass rumbles of thunder sounding like the laughter of giants at Sophie’s attempts to stand up to this immortal, powerful being. The trees creaked and groaned in a wailing wind, and the creatures of the forest called and yipped with gleaming dark eyes that promised unfriendliness. Sophie cowered back as Mother Nature drew herself up.

“I am  _ nothing!  _ I have no bleeding heart nor weeping sorrow.” Bitter scorn lashed her words. “I have no  _ name!” _

And, in a thundercrack, she disappeared into the lonely scream of the wind and the jagged teeth of the lightning. Sophie didn’t know if she’d come back. Sophie didn’t know if she’d ever see her again.

Sophie curled up against the rain, and flinched every time the small bullets struck somewhere soft. Her sniffles were drowned out by the thunder, and the tears on her cheeks looked like the rain.

Little Sophie had beat and beat her wings, and sure enough, it had caused an incredible storm.


	6. Chapter 6

Mrs Bennett hoped the horse-riding lessons would help. Sophie had been so down recently, unwilling to go out half as much as she used to; Mrs Bennett almost wished she'd go back to wandering off for hours by herself in the woods, a habit which had used to scare Mrs Bennett silly (what if she got lost, or attacked, or hungry?) but now that she missed.

Mrs Bennett wanted to cheer her up, bring back the smile on her daughter's face. A new riding stables had opened up nearby, owned by a friend of a friend; it seemed like a flawless opportunity. Not too expensive, and Mrs Bennett remembered her own love of horses back in the day. Sophie had always liked animals.

Hindsight is perfect, as they say, but when Mrs Bennett dropped Sophie off, there was no foreseeable way she could have known that she would be rushing back scarce half-hours later, with tears streaming down her cheeks and an awful, terrible fear in her heart, a fear that she thought she had buried many years before, when her little girl had miraculously recovered from leukaemia.

For now though, everything was well, and Sophie thought she had nothing to fear. Indeed, why would she? Sophie was quite curious about horse-riding, and nervously excited. The talk about safety information went well and for the most part, everyone listened attentively, and Sophie picked out a good sized, well-fitting hard hat from the office, a dusty, woody sort of place with a painting of a white horse hanging above the mantel. She listened hard to the blond-haired, svelte-looking instructor, and was slow and gentle, if a little startled by the size of the horse, when they brought her out, already fitted with saddle, bridle, and lead rein.

It was black mare called Sooty, barely a pony, really, with scraggly mane and clipped tail. She stood lazily, pulling against her bridle every so often and swishing her tail, a placid old thing, head sunk low and nose waiting to be put into the next food bucket. A beginner pony for someone who had never ridden before. Simple enough.

The clouds scudded over a normal sky, the sun shading in jade patches through the leaves of the nearby tree. Dust puffs raised from scraping hooves, and the clop of shod horses on stone clattered and clanged from somewhere else. The big school, with its grey, mushy-ish ground and posts with obscure letters at various corners, sprawled before them, a border collie lolling lazily in the sun. An old café hunched on the other side, twisted oaken doors thrown open to let in the sun. The more anxious parents waited there, peering through the dusty windows for a glimpse of their child.

Sophie stood on the mounting block, huffing a bit at the height of the steps. A twig snapped under Sooty's restless hoof – the mare did not seem particularly enthused at going out for a ride on such a warm, sleepy day. One of the stablehands, a teenage girl with dyed purple hair and a tartan shirt, smiled warmly at Sophie, adjusting the stirrups to a rough approximation. She called gentle instructions to help Sophie on.

The other little girls and boys were already mounted, staring at Sophie hesitating on the mounting block. Sophie couldn't explain it, but a fear unlike nervousness was clenching in her stomach. She thought she could see a shadow spreading out from the tackroom, curling over the brushes and the unused saddles, lingering in the half-filled bucket of soapy water. It was a feeling that ached of something _more,_ a tingling that Sophie usually only felt when she went to strongly spiritual places.

But what sort of creature haunted a newly-opened riding stables? What sustenance was there to glean here?

Sophie was probably overreacting, she decided, and reached out with a shaking hand to place a tentative hand on Sooty's neck. The mare was reassuringly solid and warm, the roughness of her coat and the fine, but stiff little hairs smoothing over the powerful equine muscles beneath. Sooty's shaggy ears pricked up, and she whuffed faintly in surprise, shifting her stance.

“Hello,” said Sophie very softly, so softly the others couldn't hear her. The mare's head raised, and snuffling, she turned to lip curiously at Sophie's wellie boots. Liquid dark eyes stared calmly into Sophie's own, though gleaming with a foreign interest. Sooty swished her tail.

The stablehand patiently turned Sooty's head back, nodding at Sophie encouragingly. Patting Sooty's neck once more, Sophie put her foot in the stirrup and swung her leg over the mare's back, settling slightly heavily in the saddle. She winced apologetically, then suddenly clutched onto the saddle's pommel as her world spun around her. Her body sank forward a little, and Sophie blinked as a green butterfly fluttered out of Sooty's hair.

 _No, no, not now!_ Sophie thought in horror, tried with all her might to focus on her present, the musky smell of horse and the sun on her neck, the twitch of her muscles squeezing the saddle, the stablehand's impersonal touch as she adjusted Sophie's stirrups, the shift and movements of the living breathing horse underneath her, the strange dizziness of being so high up.

The air she breathed tasted of the winds from another world. She tasted the crispness of snow and laughter, the pungent mould of sweat and fear. _Fear._ An electric prickle ran up her spine, and a hollow feeling yawned in her chest. She was a splintered part of a whole, doomed to forever long to be part of that whole.

The black mare shuddered lazily, and stiffened in instant recognition. She whinnied shrilly and trumpeted a happy greeting to the one it perceived as mother, searching head turning to find the source of that familiar feeling. The horses around them sniffed and pawed the ground restlessly. The sun was swallowed by a sudden cloud and darkness fell swift and cold.

Sophie shivered. Cold sweat ran down her neck. Her body was listing heavily to one side, her trembling muscles feeling remote and clumsy, like bags of wet sand. Colours and noise were sinking away from her as if they had never existed. Concern was starting to show in the others' faces, and Sophie opened her mouth to tell them about the candles flickering in their skulls. Weren't they afraid that they were going to blow out? It would only take one pinch of wind.

Sooty was searchingly twisting, trying to reach the small human on her back. The mare jerked her head and the lead rein fell from the startled stablehand's grip. Nervously, the mare pranced back and forth. The shadows washed over the floor like a deep dark river. Sooty was becoming frustrated at her inability to reach Mother Nature, whom she perceived somewhere above her, removed, as if she wasn't really there.

Confusion and anxiety brewed in the mare, sped along with fingertip touches of fear. _Fear._ She neighed loudly, and then suddenly reared, her hooves flashing and nearly kicking the unprepared stablehand in the eye. Sophie, an inexperienced rider, slipped from her back as easily as a leaf in autumn.

The fall took hold of her with horrifying hands, jerked and twisted and spun. Sickness revolted in her stomach and she was aware of a thin high scream, suspended in that moment of pure terror. It dragged, lasted for minutes when seconds was necessary, and Sophie's eyes bled over with a different world, shadows slinking down the walls and tendrils of shadowfire trailing from Sooty's rearing hooves, citrine and madness shining like fevered suns out of the mare's maddened head. Sophie was screaming, knew she wasn't the only one, her arms windmilling, something thick and cloying and oily brushing and rubbing against her grabbing hands.

The shock of the fall lasted for a splinter moment of incredible pain, and then the rest of Sophie kept falling, saw her body spread-eagled and unmoving on the stone floor, dust in her hair and the hardhat nearly knocked askew, the shouts of the stablehands and a single green butterfly landing on the tip of her nose.

But the shadows were suckling and swirling and sucking around her like a whirlpool, dragging her down with desperate desire, fear that sank ropelike cords of _don't leave me lET ME GO!_ Her core throbbed and ached with terrible pain, the edges of her broken core screaming like bloodied and torn, paper-thin butterfly wings.

The light dwindled away and the crash-landing was loud and painful. Rocks caught and clawed and stabbed, and Sophie felt her tears splash onto the jet rocks, slick with someone else's blood, with someone else's tears. She felt tarry blood sinking into her scrapes and screamed and screamed, though her voice was swelling bruiselike in her throat, birds and worms campaigning for space.

“Help-” Sophie moaned, “Help me.” She had a half-idea that Mother Nature might be listening, it certainly didn't feel like she was alone, watching eyes like an audience of jeering monsters, of impersonal angels. “Please, I'm lost and I'm scared and I just want to go home-”

Her voice trailed off, weak and silly in the oppressive silence, and Sophie curled up in a ball and shivered in the darkness. It was cold and absolute, like deep space, with claws that sank into her body like knives.

A soft voice, ragged from screaming, whispered in a few pitches lower and far more desperate, “Me too.”

Sophie froze. Her heart thundered in her ears and her blood rushed around her body as if it was the last time it ever would.

“Please,” the terrifying echo begged, “Please, please help me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, just _get me out before they come back!”_

Brilliant golden eyes lit up the gloom, and a hand so cold it had frozen the shadows to it touched her cheek with all the tenderness of a parent.

A rising scream caught in Sophie's throat, and the dark enfolded her.

 


	7. Chapter 7

His sister looked very small in the hospital bed. The beep of machines registering her activity were almost muffled against the pounding of blood roaring through his ears, or his mother's prayers as she clutched one limp pale hand to her tear-streaked face. Jamie wondered if she was thinking of the cancer, miraculously cured when Sophie was young. Did God give out more than one per life? He didn't know.

There were already bruises showing up on her face, blueish-purple blemishes of broken blood vessels. Her right arm was bandaged up. The nurse staff had said she was lucky to get away with just a broken arm and bruises after being near-trampled by a vindictive mare. The riding school were in agonies of apology, Jamie thought his father had threatened to sue already.

He looked at his sister, unconscious in the bed, and it became abruptly too much. He stood, and made his way outside, muttering excuses to the nurses who watched him with too-sympathetic eyes. Out, into the cool afternoon air, listless winds scudding leaves over greyish, chewing-gum splattered pavements. He picked a wall, slouched against it, idly pulled out his phone. Monty had texted him.

_Is she ok?_

Angrily, he shoved the phone back into his pocket. He didn't know. The nurses thought so. But she wasn't waking up, and people who woke up did so in _seconds,_ usually.

The door banged, wind ripping it from a tired hand, falling dully from the handle. Mr Bennett stared back at Jamie, his face shapeless around his pale eyes. His brown suit was crumpled; he'd spilt coffee on his pinstripe tie. “Heya,” he said, and then, “She's okay, son. The nurses said they'll keep her overnight anyway, but I thought us two'd better head back.”

Jamie said nothing. His jaw knotted. He didn't want to leave, but he couldn't bear being here any longer. His father seemed to understand, by the slightly rueful look he shot Jamie in commiseration. Silence dragged, became awkward quickly. In front of the plain white hospital doors, father and son were motionless, wordless, and it quickly passed comfortable.

Eventually, Mr Bennett started walking towards the car, and mutely Jamie followed. It wasn't far, but it took Mr Bennett three tries to get the keys in the ignition, because his hands were shaking. Jamie sat in the passenger seat and stared out of the window as manicured trees became heavy grey houses, and smudged shopfronts. It seemed lifetimes away that he'd whizzed through here on a sled with Jack spurring him on, back when he couldn't see Jack. Almost unbelievable.

Jamie scowled. Guardians of Childhood. Where were they when the horse reared?

He shook off his bitter thoughts with a sigh. It wasn't Jack's fault. They couldn't be expected to keep every child safe everywhere.

But still, it rankled.

The car rolled to a stop with a squeeze of the brakes, and the Bennetts sat in further uncomfortable silence, staring up at the cheery face of their house. Jamie had left his light on. Abby barked from inside; it was past her feeding time.

At last, Jamie broke the silence by getting out of the car. He went straight upstairs, ignoring his father, who turned into the kitchen, judging by Abby's excited barking. No, Jamie kept going, past his own ajar door towards the end of the hall, where Sophie's room streamed light in through the window to the hall. He paused in the doorway, looking around with fresh eyes at the brilliant, bright paintings covering the walls, nearly all of one subject – a tall, dark-skinned, scarred woman, with long, thunderous black hair and sharp green eyes. Sophie's green woman, her imaginary friend since what, two?

Many people called Jack Jamie's imaginary friend.

The errant thought hit him like a thunderclap, and he rounded the portraits, staring at them with a closer eye. The details were far too identical, surely. Sophie certainly didn't talk about her green woman – what had she called her? He cursed himself for not paying attention, now – like an imaginary friend.

He crossed the room, lowering himself into a seated position in front of the easel, which still bore the most recent painting of Sophie's green woman holding a butterfly.

And then he whispered, “Are you... are you real?”

He paused. His heart thudded in his ears. “Can... can you hear me? I hope you can. I really need your help. Wherever you are, whoever you are – I hope you hear me.” As he said the words, he closed his eyes and concentrated on everything he knew about Sophie's green woman – she was a patron of nature, she was depicted with butterflies, and she was inextricably linked to Sophie. And he sent out a call, powered by the strength of a belief that had brought back the dead.

Mother Nature, hearing the dim echoes of her name, paused in her work. A squirrel nudged under her palm curiously, but she was senseless to the feeling of the silky fur.

It had been centuries since anyone had last summoned her, someone other than Sophie, but Mother Nature remembered the feeling. Wrath bubbled instantly – of course – but curiosity swiftly followed. The discovery surprised her. Barely decades ago she would not have hesitated to destroy every ape in the village for the temerity of summoning her.

She thought of Sophie insisting that humans were worth a second chance, and her smile slipped from her beaten cheeks. _Sophie._ She'd intended to leave it a while, then come back like their spat had never happened, but deep inside, she felt uncomfortable.

Mother Nature could almost say that she felt... regret.

Maybe she had overreacted a little. Nearly everyone Mother Nature had been in extended contact with for a time had inquired about her origins at some point. Maybe it was her accent, or her obviously alien height and facial features. She didn't care. She usually brought storms down on their heads and pretended that it never happened.

Did she want to be that to Sophie, the only little child that had ever bothered to ask for _her_ true name?

The call came again, a little more insistent, and Mother Nature hissed at her own mental absence. She concentrated on her beating heart snared down in the roots of the earth, tracked the call over paths and rivers and mountains, swaying grasses and firm tree trunks. Her spirits sank as she recognised the location of the call – the little human town of Burgess.

_Sophie._

She assumed the eyes of a close sparrow, hopped up to the window ledge and stared in as the Bennett boy, Sophie's brother (was it James? Jim? She hadn't bothered to remember), knelt before the picture Sophie had painted of her, his eyes roving desperately over the face, penitent in entreaty.

“Please,” he was saying. “My sister. Look – she said that you were – well, whatever. But I guess if Jack's real, then you must be too. Please help her. They're saying – she was kicked in the head. By a horse.” He paused. “Everyone says she's going to be okay, but, I guess – can you check? Make sure? Please, just wake her up...”

A dreadful foreboding came over Mother Nature, and in an instant, she pulled away from the sparrow to focus on the thread that connected Sophie and herself. It pulsed, but emptily, and when she tried to peer deeper, all she could see was darkness. A familiar, aching darkness that rang of long gone, broken ages, and her father's shadow-stained laughter.

It was like an icy bucket of water had been upended over her head, drenching her to the bone.

The gamut of emotions this caused paralysed her for shock. She was terrified, but not for herself, for her plants, but for Sophie. There was rage, rage at whoever had done this to her. And a sneaking, dreadful suspicion that she knew exactly who it had been.

_How did he find her? How did he find her?_

The myriad of conflicting thoughts showed itself in a whirling hurricane kicked up around her. It would hit the coasts in a few hours, destroy thousands of lives. She didn't care. She told herself she still didn't.

The Nightmare King had taken Sophie, and Mother Nature knew that she wouldn't be able to sway whatever grip Pitch had over her alone. Not to mention, she had technically sworn an oath of non-interference.

She clenched her fists, and blinked at the swirling dust and sand kicked up around her. Well, there was someone she could still ask, after all this time.

Her body blurred into a thousand streaming butterflies, every one with a spot of golden sand on their wings.

 _I'm coming, little one,_ she thought in the direction of Sophie, thinking maybe it would reach her anyway, _No one touches what is mine._

* * *

The darkness pressed close; it was a living thing. Shadows swarmed the walls like the silent sweep of a vulture's wing, and the hooves of nightmares on the hunt rang against the stones, each one a jagged tooth, as if they were death-tolls. Time meant nothing here save in the fragments of a broken dreamer's scream, and Sophie knew nothing but the beat of her sobbing companion's heart to track it. Even that was irregular – shuddering in stops and starts, like a corpse held animate on the brink of a death-rattle.

But nonetheless, his thin twiglike arms encircled her and the points of his eyes were the only light piercing the gloom; they were feverish gold, like treasure-lust and long-gone ages of wonder. In this hellscape, it was the only beacon, and more than made up for his demented babbling and habit of raking shadow-sharp claws over rock. It made the most hair-raising and twisted shrill _skree-skree,_ but the sound seemed to ground him, because he always shut up for a little while after.

That, Sophie came to find, was a preciously rare thing.

She was grateful for his presence. Down in the dark with the forgotten monsters, she had never been so terrified in her life. The fear was haunting; it came in skitters of electric panic when they heard the horses shriek far away, getting closer (at that, he would begin sobbing, the sort of heaving, messy tears someone does when they have no hope left but could not bear to bottle their misery any longer), and for the rest of the time, the fear was a low, nauseous ache. Never had the fluttering butterfly wings of Mother Nature's gift felt so fragile.

“You can't go.” He was babbling again, desperate words bubbling out of his cracked and bitten lips, jumbled in his need to get them all out. He was furtive when he talked, shaky bony fingertips plucking uselessly at her hair or clothes, demanding attention in a way even madness couldn't suppress.

She tuned him out, most days.

“You can't,” he insisted, wetly, “I know – you were something – I can see it.” Halfpenny eyes shone hopefully in the darkness. “My daughter. My daughter.”

Sophie said nothing. She was too cold, too tired, too scared to ponder on his meaning. He was a madman, anyway, she never expected him to make sense. He repeated the phrase endlessly as she stumbled on through the brackish dark tunnels, her bleary eyes straining to see a handspan in front of her face. She never heard him moving, but he was always right behind her when she turned around, those flaming eyes shining out the only light onto the hollow sweeps of his cheekbones.

She was just so exhausted. If only she could lie here, for a little while, and let herself _sink..._

“My daughter, my daughter,” he was shrieking, capering in a funny little dance, disjointed body all akimbo. The cacophony wrenched her from her vague somnolence, leaned up against the wall, and Sophie felt tears in her eyes from the frustration.

She just wanted to sleep! Did he want to kill her?

“I can see it in you,” he whispered, like a secret, and in an instant he was curling his body around her, singing something soft and aching that rang of distant pasts. Sophie let herself crumple against his moth-eaten robe, the sour stench of fear-sweat and sulphur blocking her nose, then something gritter, dark, a strange slick sort of scent that she didn't recognise. “My daughter!” He laughed, and said it again, in tender wonder, his ragged claws scratching her scalp as he passed them over her hair.

Miserably, Sophie wondered if she would ever see the sky again. Was Mother Nature punishing her? A dry, hiccuping sob wrenched her, and she turned her face into the crooning madman's chest, voiceless with terror as she slowly started to cry.

“My daughter!” he chittered, gleefully, “I knew you'd come back for me! I knew you wouldn't leave me to rot here! My daughter, _my daughter.”_

 


	8. Chapter 8

The golden beams of the Sandman’s presence twinkled like fairy lights in the darkness. Lights clicked off in windows as they swept overhead, Sandy’s presence enough of a deterrence to wakefulness to nudge the last few insomniacs into sleep. The moon shimmered like a smooth pearlescent eye, a gentle orb that blinked compassionately as the clouds obscured it, flurried around by Mother Nature’s winds. It was an almost balmy night, warm and dark and sleepy, or perhaps that was just Sandy’s effect - Mother Nature had not seen him in so long, she couldn’t tell.

To his credit, he had immediately agreed when Mother Nature had come to him, desperate for help, without further question and pausing only to shape a few dream animals to run over the parts of his route that he wouldn’t be able to attend to that night, shedding enough sand from their bodies to hopefully make pleasant dreams, if not particularly exciting or personal ones.

She had half-feared questions or mockery, but her gentle pilot offered none of the sort. She looked up at him now, some halting word on the tip of her tongue, but it died inside her mouth when she saw the look on his face, in his eyes, cold, hard and expectant. Even his sand cloud threatened snakelike tendrils that could too easily become whips in their master’s hands. 

Sandy was ready for battle, but what was more, he looked  _ angry. _

A hint of dread touched Mother Nature’s heart, and she averted her eyes and concentrated on spurring the winds she was riding. She had not bothered to check on the recent news of the spirit world, believing herself aloof and above it, but now she regretted her ignorance. Something had infuriated her Sandman -  _ someone -  _ had done him enough of a wrong that now he looked eager to exact revenge. In all the years she had known him, Sandy had never looked happy about going into battle.

_ Oh Father, what have you done now?  _ Mother Nature wondered. She steeled herself against any recalcitrant  _ feelings  _ like sympathy or temperance. Pitch Black had attacked Sophie, and Mother Nature would not permit anyone to dare touch her tiny butterfly of a child, let alone a monster who could bring eternal corruption and darkness with just one clawtip. She shuddered to think what he could be doing to her at this moment, while her body was held captive in the physical world and her mind abandoned in the spiritual. 

Even stronger than before, regret and guilt warred in Mother Nature’s heart. She should not have been so dismissive and cruel to Sophie when Sophie had only wanted to know Mother Nature - know the woman within Mother Nature, know a name so long-ignored that Mother Nature preferred to think she had forgotten it. Even now, her lips formed around ancient syllables, not daring to allow the wind of this world to taste it yet. 

For so long, she had been running from herself, from her past, from her humanity, long enough to call cowardice objectivity. 

Sophie had forced her to confront the very human heart still beating in Mother Nature’s breast, and Mother Nature cursed herself for letting her every time she cautiously lessened her wind-speed in order to not wreck the crops below, or tear the roof off that house, or knock that late-night cyclist. Consideration no longer came naturally to her.

The blocky shape of the hospital, brightly lit by harshly artificial lights, came into view, stark against the endless blackness of the night. Wordless, Sandy dropped back to let Mother Nature find the window to Sophie’s room. 

Mrs Bennett, sitting at Sophie’s bedside, must have felt a strange, tingling feeling overwhelming her at that moment. Try as they might, humans had never been able to ignore the feelings of powerful spirits interacting so close to them, separated only by the thin veil between spiritual and physical worlds. 

Mother Nature’s hand grazed the brick wall, and vines twisted out of the stone eagerly, growing things and tender little shoots spreading over the walls like a great painting, the vines closest by thickening like great snakes. By the morning, the whole side of the building will be covered in greenery, thick and thriving, vineflowers opening their eyes to the sun, the air heaving with fragrant perfume. They will try to cut back the vines, but end up having to replace the whole wall, the roots had twisted that deep.

Muscles flexed under scarred brown skin as Mother Nature clutched onto the network of vines, her rippling thundercloud of hair blotting out any view of inside the window. The last nurse had left it partially ajar, and a gust of wind banged it fully open. Mrs Bennett jumped. 

Mother Nature squirmed through the gap, her long, toned body slipping through like an oiled snake. 

Sandy eyed the narrow opening and sighed.

A moment later he dissolved himself into a stream of sand and entered the window that way, regaining his usual portly frame once inside and irritably brushing his sand-suit down. A strange expression crossed his face, and then he reached into his right arm and parted the sand there, pulling out a leaf that had got stuck in his sand as he had gone through the window. Sheepishly, Sandy threw it quickly out of the window before Mother Nature could see.

She was standing at the foot of the bed, huge in this room built for human proportions, bowing her head slightly to avoid knocking it on the ceiling. Her hair was almost tamed now, subdued, certainly, pressing low and close to her skull as if in sorrow. Her large, scarred hands held the metal bedframe, her white knuckles and groan of the bending metal the only betrayal of how tightly she was holding it. Ropes of vines clothed her, their dappled leaves dipping with her sorrow. The flowers that grew from her skin wilted slightly. A fearsome, alien giantess, bent over the sleeping form of a comatose human girl, rainwater curving down her hollowed cheeks and strange, inhuman features. She looked united that moment with Mrs Bennett, who sat dully on a chair beside her daughter’s bed, holding one limp hand, both with dark hair, head bowed, eyes sunken into their heads from exhaustion and worry.

Sandy shifted from foot to silent foot, and Mother Nature looked at him, with the slow, weary creak of an ancient oak’s branches in the wind. 

“Help her,” she commanded, her breath the rush of wind through savannah grasses, and Sandy nodded, hopping up onto the bed and patting Mrs Bennett’s head. 

The dreamsand sank into her eyes, and without too much prompting her head joined her hands on the bed and she was fast asleep, lightly snoring. Mother Nature remained at the foot of the bed like a watchful hawk, standing silent vigil to protect Sophie’s soulless body until her butterfly’s wandering mind could be returned to her. She settled in to wait, one leg taking most of the weight, just like a resting horse, though her unblinking eyes shone piercing acid green in the gloom like a sleepless owl, her hair drifted and eddied in invisible currents like the fronds of seaweed, and her ear twitched at the noises of the staff walking the corridors like a stalking wolf. Grass slowly spread from her feet, carpeting the room in a lush, living forest environment.

Sandy settled on Sophie’s chest, his weight too tiny to restrict her breathing. Almost instantly, what tension there had been in Sophie’s body utterly relaxed as the sleep paralysis took effect. Then he leaned forward and blew dreamsand lightly over her eyelids, stirring her spiritual self, and in an instant, dipped forward and disappeared into her dreams.

He reappeared in darkness.

Sandy’s presence was like a burning brand to the starving Nightmares that hounded this weary haunt, but they remembered the burn of his fiery whip, and steered clear, though he could still hear their famished shrieks and whinnies, their hooves clattering off the jagged rocks, the rustle of compact sand flowing over slick darkness and sand. He saw the citron pinpricks of their eyes, and knew a few were close enough for him to shatter with a touch if he so chose. 

He didn’t.

The Nightmares, at first flighty and uncertain, bowed swiftly to his might. He bore their curiosity with gentle amusement, not minding as they crowded around him, nipping thoughtfully at his sandy robe with their needle teeth. He patted a grainy dark muzzle, the Nightmare’s flaming eyes widening as a patch of restored gold bloomed there. He chuckled a little at the mare’s surprise, shaking her head as she shrieked to her fellows. Determinedly, she set to scraping her muzzle against her leg, trying to remove the splinters of gold.

Sandy had the power to make almost any creature adore him and crave his presence, it was simply the lot of Dreams, and broken creatures of stolen darkness were no different. Indeed, darkness always craved light.

_ Take me to Pitch Black,  _ he bade them, and though they tossed their heads a little uncertainly, the Nightmares were fairly quick to agree. Docile now, they trotted beside him, carefully picking up their hooves and swishing their long tails, trying their best to show off as they led the way. He smiled a little at their eagerness to please, and thought,  _ How like Pitch, to create servants just as desperate for attention and approval as himself.  _ It was no wonder they had turned so quickly on him when his powers had faltered. These flighty, demanding children must have seen it as a terrible betrayal.

Soon enough, Sandy heard them, their feet slipping on the stones, Pitch whispering demented, broken things to himself and the girl’s heartbeat shining like a beacon. He overtook the Nightmares, rising up on a sand cloud, and headed straight for the pair. 

He found them crouched, cowardly, in the lee of a rock. Pitch was curled around her, tears in his eclipse-eyes, begging Sandy already to let her stay. His words were garbled and near-intelligible, but Sandy had no need for the exact wording to understand. The girl herself was limp in his arms, her dull blue eyes shining with a faint layer of Mother Nature’s green. 

Sandy did not hesitate. Paying no mind to Pitch’s heartwrenching pleas, he kicked the broken shade aside and collected the girl gently into his arms. He smiled warmly at her, and Sophie felt tears streak down her cheeks as she nestled into the warmth, the safety, the security touching him brought her. For the first time in - how long had she been down here? She couldn’t tell - she felt safe enough to rest, and her eyes fluttered half-closed, not quite able to let herself sink fully into sleep yet.

They rose swiftly out of the darkness, chased by the scrabble of Pitch’s nails against stone and his vicious screams for mercy. The Nightmares, recognising the shouts of their former master, approached greedily, slavering jaws open ready to rend and tear.

“Please!” Pitch begged, “Please Sandy, please, you can’t leave me here!”

He grabbed onto one of Sandy’s small little feet, heaving his skinny, ugly little body up towards Sandy, desperate to be freed from his own darkness. Sandy stared at him, and felt a familiar dull ache reverberate through his spine.

_ I can’t bring you out of this darkness, only you can do this,  _ he whispered, and Pitch clawed against his robe. The cold pain in Sandy’s spine was beginning to spread, darkness blooming along an unhealed faultline, a permanent weakness buried deep into the heart of Dreams.

Sandy had to leave,  _ now. _

_ “Sandy, Sandy, I’ll do anything, just get me out!”  _ Pitch screamed, and Sandy closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see the terror on Pitch’s face as he kicked him free, back into the eager throng of toothy Nightmares. A fanged muzzle snapped shut around one of Pitch’s kicking legs, teeth grating against bone, and the first agonised shriek followed them out as the Nightmares took their time playing with the destruction of their former king.

Sandy carried Sophie up, up, away, into the clear cool touch of starlight. She dozed in his warm arms, smelling freshly laundered sheets and cinnamon, something dusty and gunpowdery. The wind rustled around them softly, a low, haunting song, and Sophie’s eyes closed. She tucked her head against his grainy shoulder, and whispered, “Did you hurt him?”

Pitch’s agonised screaming was echoing in her mind. She had grown… fond, if not protective, of her annoying companion in the darkness, and now she was confused. Everything about this soft, golden being encouraged trust and love, but he had hurt Pitch so terribly…

She felt more than heard the rustle of a mournful laugh.  _ No, child. We cannot be hurt by such physical means. Any pain he felt was his own wish.  _

“What?” Sophie asked, opening her eyes to look at the Sandman now. He smiled at her, warm and soft and golden. 

_ Pitch is at war with his powers for as long as he is at war with himself. He feels guilt and hurt for things done in the past, things he may not realise that he feels guilt for.  _ Sandy’s smile fell a little, and he rolled his shoulders back with a wince.  _ Once he learns to forgive himself and make amends for the trials of his past, then his fight against his own darkness will stop, and he will rise again as strong and as healthy as before. _

Sophie stared at him, trying to pick out any falsehood in his open, friendly face. Maybe he was too skilled a liar, but she couldn’t see anything to suggest he was misleading her. “Do you want that?” she asked, warily, and he burst out into silent, sad laughter.

_ Child, you are sharper than Pitch is. If only he were able to ask himself what we  _ want _ from him rather than what he assumes, he may end up in a far more beneficial deal… for everyone. We certainly don’t want an adversary.  _ Sandy winked at her, and Sophie blinked a little.  _ Light calls to dark, dark calls to light. _

“Oh-kay,” said Sophie, feeling a little embarrassed now and somewhat like the time when she was seven and had gone down for a glass of water and interrupted her parents doing something she had wished she had not seen. 

Sandy’s own cheeks warmed, to the colour of ruddy amber, and he turned his face away with another soft little chuckle.  _ Give him time. More time, and more time. He is stubborn and bitter. But eventually he will return to us - and me.  _ The words seemed to be more for himself than for her, so Sophie kindly ignored them. She yawned.

Sandy blinked and stirred.  _ Go to sleep, child,  _ he said, softly, and offered her a cushion of golden sand. Gratefully, she curled up on it, and within moments, was fast asleep, lulled by a warm tide of pleasant dreams. Her heart slowed and her breathing deepened, the stress and tension of her ordeal in the darkness smoothed away. Her skin and hair was brightening the longer they spent outside, caressed by Mother Nature’s element, winds and sky and nature and rain, far from the pallid, ghostly creature he had pulled from Pitch’s sapping darkness. 

He absently wove dreams on the return flight, for as long as there was bluish-purple land, dyed indigo by the night, underneath him to weave dreams for. Eventually, they passed over steely blue oceans, shining all over with silvery moonlight. Mermaids and seadragons splashed to the surface as Sandy passed, calling out greetings that he never failed to return. A speck of gold began to dominate the horizon, resolving into a brilliant, bright gold Dreamship, placid in the warm waters, shining under the light of the stars. Already, the ship was fully staffed with wandering shades, the sleeping minds of thousands of humans who slept with Sandy’s sand over their eyes, transporting their wandering souls to the endless, rolling shores of Dreamland. 

Cradling her sleeping spirit, Sandy descended slowly and headed into one of the uppermost towers. The rooms here were smooth and doorless, specifically made for wandering souls that had a penchant for leaving the body frequently just like Sophie’s did.

Perhaps this was cruel, but it was a necessity. He placed her spirit in one of the soft beds, then floated out and sealed the door forever shut. No longer would she wander, torn betwixt two worlds. It would have killed her, or at least, driven her irrevocably mad.

Sandy had seen it happen before, too many times for it to heal over.  _ Dearest Katherine,  _ he thought to himself as he drifted out of a window,  _ I think you would have loved this one. _


	9. Chapter 9

The faint sunrise blushed on the horizon, making ribbed green silhouettes of the vine leaves cast greenish shadows through the window of Sophie’s hospital room. A springy, tangled lawn twined from the rusted metal bedposts right up to the walls and the doors, creeper vines and wisteria crawling into the minute cracks in the walls and scenting the air heavily with springtime fragrance. Bees buzzed cheerfully in and out of the open window; a few sparrows hopped curiously onto the sill to peer in with their clever, beady, black eyes, their glossy feathers dully glossy in the early morning light. 

The centrepiece of the display was the little girl, of course, deeply asleep, with her blonde hair splayed over the pillow like ringlets of molten gold, a tiny little smile creasing her sleeping lips. The hospital gown she wore was too big, and fell in odd lines around her little body, making her look so much tinier than she actually was, dwarfed and diminished in that stark white bed. An intrigued wren perched on the bedpost, occasionally fanning its small wings to keep the sun off her lily-white face. 

Such a tiny little thing, this human girl, only twelve, with nature pounding in her ribs behind her heartbeat with the frantic beat of butterfly wings kicking up a cosmic storm that had gripped the long-unchanged heart of cold Mother Nature herself, who still stood over her, watchful as ever. Mother Nature had not moved during the night, as frozen and stolid as one of the great glaciers in the icebound north. 

Sophie’s own mother, Mrs Bennett, had been moved and woken during the night - visiting hours had ended, she had to go home, but first thing in the morning, she had returned. But the mother eternal had not moved an inch, that fixed, unblinking stare cataloguing every twitch and movement on the sleeping girl’s face. 

Perhaps that unspoken, watchful presence had been why Mrs Bennett had felt able to leave her child that night, to go home and sleep in the arms of her husband, have a dearly needed shower and breakfast, allow herself to be human and refuel before she had to return to being the strong mother for her child, perhaps it was Mother Nature’s presence that left her comfortable enough, knowing somehow that Sophie was not alone. 

Mothers always had been closer to the eternal spirit of life, able to feel her presence more, powers aligned in blood and body and flesh, the quickening and shaping of new life within their own womb and flesh, made from their flesh, life, made from their own. In the past, Mother Nature had usually drawn a feminine worship, of fertility and motherhood and sacred feminine things, the eternal mother whose hand quickened every eager womb. 

Mother Nature had long divorced herself from these reckless, soft-skinned children, refusing to claim humanity for her own, repulsed by their selfishness and greed and mistakes. But now, her anger and hate tempered to the chiding of a parent, and she cared for these erstwhile creations, cared as she cared for every wriggling worm, budding new shoot, or tiny newborn foal.

For all of her professed hatred and coldness, Mother Nature had inescapably been a creature of boundless love behind her steely, mercurial temper. It only took twelve years of persistence and one very determined little butterfly to get her to  _ show  _ it.

Another hint of gold deepened the warmth of the light in the room, and all of a sudden a slow, dreamy feeling seeped out like seductive gas, the crash of waves and taste of salt on the tongue, the hoarse murmur of woken lovers, the crispness of new bedsheets scented with cinnamon and roses. Beneath that, something esoterically electric, zinging and zapping with fey desire, dreams that promised writhing ecstasy under long-gone constellations, fire and stardust pressed into sweat-slick skin and the burning heat of stars ripped too soon from the heavens. 

_ The Sandman comes,  _ thought Mother Nature, and permitted herself to blink for the first time that night.

When she reopened her eyes, a dusty halo of golden sand was coalescing over Sophie’s head, forming first the soft, round shape, the smooth circular face, the messy spikes of wind-fluffed hair, then the chubby little fists, the slow, openmouthed smile, the aurous haze of the darkened eyes, the intricate details of the sand-suit, like the scalloped edges of a sea shell, and finally, the tiny, demure little feet. Fully formed, Sandy floated silently down and alighted on Sophie’s knee, grinning with that benign, innocently cheerful warmth he always did.

_ Hello,  _ he said, at first, and Mother Nature’s hair lifted and rippled, fanning out around her in a subtle display of irritation at his time-wasting. He laughed, and the laughter seemed to possess his entire body, shaking up through his sternum to his round, dimpled cheeks. For some reason, her heart stuttered, then grew warm with love for him.

_ A dangerous creature, certainly,  _ Mother Nature mused, and waited to hear what he had to say. 

_ She is safe,  _ he said, and now sadness touched his cherubic features, the fall of his smile swift and devastating like the sweep of a guillotine.  _ I brought her to Dreamland myself. She will stay there until such a time that she no longer walks in the light. _

An old euphemism, and a tired one. Mother Nature glared at him for the reference to that old, shared past of theirs, a world where in the great Constellations of the Golden Age, abandoning the light for darkness was death itself.

“She no longer wanders, then,” said Mother Nature, and her voice sounded strange, rusty and creaking, even to herself. She cleared her throat, wondered when she had started sounding as old as she felt. 

A pause, and then Sandy nodded, sadly. His face was full of desperate, open sympathy, and she couldn’t bear his kindness now. 

These  _ Guardians  _ had a way of getting under her skin, poking and prodding at her hurt, scarred places until she gave up and let them in, into her heart, into her self. There, they set about making homes for themselves, wrapping themselves up in her thought and emotion, until they were so deeply entrenched into her icy heart that even the most dedicated efforts couldn’t remove them. Toothiana had done the same thing, wormed her way past Mother Nature’s defenses and then tried to bring the citadel down from within.

Mother Nature had long been proud of the fact that she had fallen, but she had not fallen far before she had caught herself, and rebuilt from the ashes of herself after Toothiana had left. Now, she began to wonder if she truly had stopped falling after all.

Surely, if she had moved on, hardened herself, stopped wanting after all these years, the kindness of a sympathetic once-friend wouldn’t hurt so much? 

_ She needed to stay,  _ he told her emphatically.  _ I am sorry. _

Mother Nature nodded, guardedly, and then said, stiffly, “Thank you. You may leave, now.” It was an order as much as anything else, she couldn’t bear having him so close and tender nearby. 

Sandy sighed. He knew that he had reached the limit of Mother Nature’s endurance for company, but it didn’t make it easier to leave when he knew she was hurting. He only wished that she would allow herself to be comforted, but Mother Nature had never been in the way of mincing words or softnesses. She hadn’t been in a very, very long time. Sandy thought maybe she saw it all as unforgivable signs of weakness - and that, he found deeply sad.

But still, now was not the time to push, now that Mother Nature had to say goodbye to a chapter in her life. Sophie’s spirit could no longer wander with Mother Nature, their adventures were fully at an end. Sandy understood her sorrow, even if she didn’t.

He rose to his feet and dissolved himself into another sparkling stream of sand, shooting out of the window and arcing up into the clear blue-pink skies. The rising sun itched and burned at his sand, so he turned away and chased the evading night, a nocturnal creature at heart. Mother Nature watched him go for as long as there was gold to see on the horizon, and then she turned back to Sophie, asleep still, dreaming peacefully.

She vowed to herself to wait until the child had awoken. She had waited all night, what was a few hours more?

The hospital wakened like a slow-moving beast around them, shouts of confusion and wonder ringing out as arriving staff saw the lush greenery carpeting one side of the building. A few nurses had come into Sophie’s room already to check on her, all extremely puzzled by the growing plant life, and had discussed moving her quickly. Before they could actually implement the changes, however, the hawkish feeling of Mother Nature’s stare burning into their backs dissuaded them and they found themselves uncomfortably leaving without quite knowing why.

Mother Nature busied herself with stirring a perfect tempest, a crackling monster of lightning and clouds, thunderclaps and rumbling groans as the sky ripped itself apart. It was to be a wild night, a fey night of hunting and stark, electric shadows. Sandy’s sweet soft dreams would find no place in Burgess tonight, but everywhere one went, they would be witness to the raw power of nature in its most savage forms.

She needed, in other words, to blow off a little steam. 

She was just pondering over adding a little unseasonable hail to the mix when Sophie stirred.

Mrs Bennett was holding her daughter’s hand, and squeezed it warmly as Sophie yawned, opened her eyes, and said in a very soft, sleepy voice, “Mom?”

“Hey, baby,” said Mrs Bennett, and there were tears in her eyes. “How’re you feeling?”

“‘M okay,” said Sophie. “Have a headache.”

“That’s to be expected,” a smiling nurse said, and proceeded to run some check-ups on the confused, but obedient girl. 

Mother Nature hovered close by as Sophie chatted with her mother and the nurse, her lively complexion warming and her laughter bright and happy. She was waiting for Sophie to glance over their heads, give some secret smile to Mother Nature, just to recognise her presence. The longer it dragged on, though, the longer a strange sort of desperation unfurled in her.

“Sophie,” she said, at last, unable to bear it any longer, praying for Sophie to lay her suspicions, her dreadful, cruel suspicions, to rest. The word went unheard, of course, by everyone else in the room, but perhaps some echoing remnant of their bond pulled on Sophie, and she shivered as if touched by cold, and glanced up, something suddenly restless in her summery blue eyes.

Her innocent gaze swept the room, seeing the plants, ignoring them all, susceptible at once to the strange blindness that forced all the others to ignore the abundance of plants. For a brief second, she looked right at Mother Nature.

Hope suddenly burst brightly in Mother Nature’s heart, and she smiled, almost tearful with gladness. This was not the end - and Mother Nature had not realised how dreadfully she had feared that Sophie might no longer see her now that the connection between them was forever walled off by glowing golden sand. 

_ “Sophie-” _

Then Sophie’s eyes moved blindly on, and Mother Nature felt something shatter.

She grabbed onto the creaking metal bedframe and snapped it. All of the humans in the room ignored the shriek of twisted metal.

Sophie couldn’t see her. 

Sophie didn’t believe in her anymore.

Mother Nature bowed her head and crossed her arms tightly across her body, as if she could hold herself together, cover up the sudden gape of emptiness in her soul. She was invisible, a nothing, a nobody, to this child that had always seen more than an  _ idea  _ in her - that had asked for her name-

A broken keen twisted up out of her throat, and Mother Nature felt the first winds of the storm began to howl as she gave herself over to a sudden, terrible grief. She hadn’t fully realised that this was it - the end of her interference in a life she had prolonged twelve years longer than she should have done, her butterfly, her  _ exception,  _ the child she had come to care for as friend and daughter both. 

And now, bitter regret warred with mourning and sadness, anger mixed in - how dare Sophie be blind to her, after Mother Nature had shared everything, had given everything to her, her heart, her soul, her kindness and love and protection, how dare Sophie  _ leave her after this? - _ she had never taken the time to apologise for their fight.

Sophie would never remember it now, save in brief, brutal twists of flashback, passed off as childish imagination,  _ imaginary friends.  _ Sophie wouldn’t remember the cold fight, Mother Nature’s affronted storm, just like a childish  _ brat -  _ and oh, hadn’t Sophie been the child? It was true. It had taken a child to re-teach her how to feel like a human again, but now she felt, and felt, and felt, and couldn’t stop feeling this awful pain.

_ How do I turn it off?  _ She thought, blindly, and opened her eyes, but it was a mistake because suddenly, the nurse walked right through her.

An icy coldness gripped her body and she shuddered, feeling as if the nurse had reached inside her and torn out a piece of her soul. An empty, dull ache throbbed deep inside her, and she pressed her own hands to her lean stomach, to her face, to her hair, assuring herself that she was still real, still tangible, still -

_ It hurt. _

Like being split apart. 

She backed away, hit the window ledge and pulled herself onto it. Safe now, she stared back one last time at Sophie, sitting up now, rosy-cheeked and cheerful, and  _ utterly unaware of her existence. _

She cleared her throat, and it must have been the rain pelting down from outside, because her cheeks were wet, and her throat was tight.

“My name is Seraphina,” she whispered, and let herself fall.


	10. Chapter 10

They sprawled together in a great, soft pile, an arrhythmic murmur of slow-rising chests and rumbling snores. Half-painted sunlight streaked messily in through one of the nearly-shuttered windows of the Pole, the haphazard diamond panes casting odd shaped shadows over the sleeping Guardians’ faces. Sandy was curled up in the middle again, cuddled on North’s chest with Jack’s hands held tightly like a lifeline, Bunny’s nose pressed to his spine and Tooth’s head resting on his chubby legs. They had, unanimously, gathered to protect the Dreamweaver in sleep as he insisted on doing yet another dangerous foray into the darkness in order to prod Pitch.

_ We can’t pull him out of the darkness,  _ Sandy had argued, all shining eyes and wobbling, tearful face,  _ But that doesn’t mean we can’t help him while he’s down there! _

Sandy mostly went alone in these subconscious forays, having long - Tooth supposed - chats with Pitch. Sometimes he brought Jack along, and the next day Jack would be haunted-looking and tired, paler than normal, thumbing his white hair through his fingertips. Tooth didn’t ask. It was better not to, when Sandy was on one of his campaigns to save Pitch. 

Sandy never gave up on the possibility of redemption, offering always other, peaceful solutions instead of the battles Pitch called for. He was reluctant until the very moment of battle - wherein they all knew they could count on Sandy to support them. The other Guardians largely brushed aside his fears, and his longings.

It wasn’t like they all didn’t miss him. The ache left by the Dark Ages waxed stronger every day, but Tooth had more or less accepted that Pitch didn’t want to come home - that he wanted to make it on his own. Sandy insisted that wasn’t true. Tooth quietly backed down. She hated it when Sandy cried, and he cried too easily these days, overcome by the memories of darkness swallowing him whole.

_ No one deserves to be left to face that alone,  _ he would argue, and Tooth would nod. She didn’t pretend to understand what Sandy had endured, and if Sandy was still focused on rescuing Pitch even after he stole someone’s child, just like he used to back in the Dark Ages, his mind fragmenting, unable to remember anything but the wrong-shaped longings for daughters that weren’t his own, caught in a brutal, internal civil war. He’d changed completely, from the Nightmare King they’d all known, gentled by Katherine’s hand, to this strange, stubborn,  _ human  _ creature, bitter and angry and obsessed with children, their fear, their nightmares, their belief. The personality change was as frightening as it was all-consuming. Sandy’s theory of two fighting, opposing forces making a battleground of Pitch’s mind made sense, but Tooth couldn’t help but wonder what side of Pitch they’d known and loved, and which side murdered Sandy in cold blood, and perhaps whether they were the same.

But those halcyon days were in the past now, Tooth supposed. She still remembered what it felt like to lose her fairies to Pitch, the betrayal that still ripped and tore - of course, she had trusted him like her own brother, she had never thought he would do such a thing. How each of their tiny minds, like little lights, had winked out, one by one. In fact, she could almost feel it now, their flashes of fear, their piping voices cut short-

At once, Tooth suddenly sat up, a cold prickle washing down her back. Her wings fanned in preparation for flight, and her crest rose in startled fear.

_ Someone was stealing her fairies.  _

She felt it. More and more teeth pinged on her awareness, her global network of fairies slowly disappearing. She focused intently, and without pausing to do anything more than yank one of North’s sabres out of his belt, she shot out of the window and instantly set a course for the place where most fairies were disappearing. Someone obviously wanted her attention. Well, they had it. 

She bared her teeth instinctively as she coursed on the highest and fastest winds. Soft, gentle creature she might have become, but Tooth remembered her roots all too well, the fearsome, savage Queen of the Fairies, handmaiden to Nature herself. Nature had taught her survival in exchange for her wildness, and Tooth had followed her doctrine completely, until the Guardians had showed her a different, kinder way to live.

Her buzzing hummingbird wings were fast, and the favourable winds sped her even faster. It didn’t take long for Tooth to cross half the world - maybe a half-hour at most. All the while, she was bitterly regretting her own absence. Sleeping was an indulgence when one was a powerful a spirit as Toothiana, and she had indulged herself at just the wrong time. She hoped her girls would be okay when she got there.

There turned out to be a lush jungle, deep in the wilds of India. If Tooth had been paying attention to the scenery, she would have recognised the place as her home territory - indeed, there was Punjam Hy Loo, shining like a rosy jewel on the horizon. Here her feathers, sapphire and jade, blended with the dusky, blue shadows and brilliant greens of the undercanopy, and without hesitation she plunged into the dim, humid greenery, instantly becoming invisible in its embrace. Her home sang through her veins. This was the place she had been made for, every careful feather placed by an artful Mother’s hand was done with these trees in mind, her amethyst eyes, her once-great, powerful pinions, reduced now to the blur of a hummingbird’s wing. 

She had divorced herself from her past, but that didn’t mean the jungle had forgotten her.

Tooth found her fairies quickly. They were set aside in a isolated clearing, the usual endless noise of the jungle mysteriously, tellingly quiet. They cheeped with relief upon seeing her, each one unharmed, but her wings coated with a sticky tree sap that had prevented them from flying away. They had even been granted a small perch, and tiny, sharp-edged pebbles to scratch the goo off. Clearly, only a temporary distraction.

Tooth had only enough time to wonder who would have done such a thing when suddenly the feathers on the back of her neck prickled up and a small brush of air over her sensitive wings alerted her to an oncoming attack. She spun around and jinked to the side just in time to avoid the heavy swipe of a sword, held in a familiar, tanned dark grip.

Mother Nature snarled at her, her face twisted and angry, and Tooth felt her own rage ignite suddenly at the realisation that Mother Nature had been the one to lure her here. She didn’t think to consider why - petty vengeance, perhaps. 

Without thought, she raised North’s heavy sabre, slightly clumsy with the unfamiliar blade, and parried the attack. The steel weapons rang off each other with a sharp clang, and Tooth’s wings buzzed, giving her height leverage as she pushed down. 

For a moment, they struggled there, pushing for dominance. The muscles in Mother Nature’s arm stood rigid, and her body wrenched herself like an oak tree sinking in its roots. But Tooth was bearing down on her with her full body weight and the power of her beating wings, and for some reason - Mother Nature wasn’t using her dominion over the wind.

At last, Mother Nature’s arm tilted under the strain, and the swords scraped in an agonising, hair-raising  _ skree  _ against one another. Tooth zipped back before Nature could use her superior strength to wrest an advantage, soared straight over Nature’s head and sliced off a swinging tendril of black hair.

Nature shrieked in pain, tree-sap splashing from the severed strands. She turned, her emerald eyes dark and savage with grief and pain. The look was heartfelt and broken enough that it gave Tooth momentary pause, but then she hardened her heart, and whirled at Nature in a flurry of blade, rather proud of her skill after so long a period of disuse.

Mother Nature danced back, the sword held loosely at her side in an awkward hold. Tooth divebombed her, was slightly puzzled when Mother Nature made the most feeble effort to deflect the blow Tooth had ever seen, scoring Tooth a long, shallow cut that twisted over Mother Nature’s collarbone like a lipless ruby grin. She bled tree-sap, mixed with blood, a greenish-red, sticky substance that Tooth knew from personal experience was hell to wash out of feathers.

A suspicion lit in Tooth’s mind, and she tried a few more explorative attacks. True to her doubts, Mother Nature let the hits land, not bothering to use her powers to so easily deflect the attacks, persisting with a clumsy weapon she didn’t seem to even know how to use. 

Eventually, Tooth had had enough of this farce of a fight. Her anger had quickly dissolved into confusion, and she rose a little, out of Mother Nature’s reach, and snapped, “Explain yourself.”

The words fell, hard and cold, between them, but even so, Tooth’s voice was tempered a little by traitorous sympathy. She had always pitied Nature, pitied her more than she should have done, and she knew that it aggravated her no end.

Mother Nature hissed at her, all feral, and lunged at her, the sword nearly skewering Tooth. Tooth held determinedly still, and called Mother Nature’s bluff, though her heart beat faster and her wings trembled in fear. At the last moment, Nature turned the sword aside, and drew back, avoiding harming her at all. 

Ashamed, now, Nature dropped the sword and stood there, bleeding and a little desperate looking, tears brimming in her bright green eyes. 

“This is what you want, isn’t it?” she demanded hoarsely. “Me, hurting?! To punish me for what I took from you? Well, here’s your chance! Go on! You have what you want!” 

Mockingly, she spread her arms wide, like a sacrifice, thinly clad in only the leaves that grew from her skin, rustling in the breeze, not bothering to obscure the scars that gnarled her dark brown skin, like tree bark, the hitched muscles rippling in her stomach as she fought back sobs, her black hair pressing close to her scalp and spine, outlining her as if it were soaking wet. True enough, it started to drizzle, and Nature’s arms dropped to her sides, her back hunching as she choked on misery.

Tooth couldn’t fight her like this. No longer could she wall off her heart when Nature clearly needed her so, despite their rocky and often warring past. She dropped North’s sabre, the weapon falling to the damp ground to join the rusted shortsword Mother Nature had been wielding - likely pulled from the nearest armoury. 

She landed instead, approached on foot, soft, tentative steps, careful not to push her luck. Nature didn’t react, so Tooth judged it safe enough to reach up and loop her arms around Nature’s upper back, guiding her to bend and lay her head against Tooth’s shoulder. Mother Nature sank to her knees instead, clutching onto her desperately, and Tooth hugged her as strongly as she was able.

Confusion and a remembrance so strong welled up inside Tooth like tears. It felt nice to hold her like this again, as they hadn’t for so long, but strange, almost unfamiliar for all of its jarring resemblance to her memories.

She began to stroke the dark, wet locks away from Nature’s bowed face, tucking them behind her long ears, thumbing the tips as she did so and smiling to herself at the reminder of long, sunny days spent stretched out on moss beds and heated rocks, combing that thick, luxurious, shining dark mane between her hands, Nature’s agile hands smoothing and preening her feathers with the expert agility of a maker. 

“Oh, Seraphina,” Tooth whispered, “What happened?”

Seraphina’s breath hitched on a wail. “Even when you hate me,” she gasped, and Tooth felt her tears soaking her feathers, “I am still  _ something  _ to you. But now - my child doesn’t even know I  _ exist.” _

Tooth didn’t understand what Seraphina was talking about, but she didn’t need to understand. She only knew in that moment what Seraphina needed more than anything else was not the bitterness, resentment or rivalry, but love and tenderness. Tooth had never been one to deny someone in need of gentle affection, but one point still needed correcting.

“I never hated you,” Tooth whispered softly into Seraphina’s hair, and let her cry herself out.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so, we're done.

It had been six years, and Sophie had grown from a girl into a young woman. Now eighteen, her childhood bedroom was replaced by boxes and packing crates, a suitcase full of clothes. It was time to leave the nest, to move on, to go to university and begin her own life. 

She sighed and stared the faded blue walls, the colour of the sky, once. There was a wobbly mural on one wall, of a collection of characters she remembered dimly, in memories like twilight. A golden, round man, a boy with a staff, a winged fairy, a rabbit, a laughing man with twin swords. Just above it, there was a picture, in childish colours, of a kneeling woman, love and warmth in her face, a small butterfly in her cupped hands.

Sophie’s lips quirked into a bitter little smile. Apparently, she’d been quite the artist as a little girl. She reached up and tore the portrait from the wall without another thought, chucking it into the rubbish pile. She was past such childish whimsies, now.

There hadn’t been any magic in Sophie’s art for many years, now. If she strained, she could remember green-hazed days of warmth and creativity, but they felt so far removed now, replaced with absolute physical groundedness.

Unseen, a tiny green butterfly alit on the painted face of Mother Nature, fanning its emerald wings. When Sophie grabbed the next picture off the wall, it lightly darted past and spiralled out of the way, up and away into the air.

Once, she had dreamed of wistful winds and towering trees, but now there was nothing but old, gold sand.

* * *

Darkness hid a roiling stormfront, and the jagged tongue of lightning flickered thoughtfully, silently. Rain hissed down in that noiseless, dangerous darkness, swift and hurried, slicking the bare trees clawing up to the sky like worshipful hands thrown high. Nature herself stalked through the black, stark limbs, inciting ecstatic shivers in every trembling, glad leaf she passed. A pack of wolves padded nearby, their eyes shining in the gloom, their heavy ruffs burdened with water. They veered close to Mother Nature, unable to stay away, like magnets drawn inescapably to their demise.

Everything was dark, silent, frigid with the near snap of winter. The temperatures had plummeted from the daytime’s warmth, and now frost threatened on the rain that dared settle, or slip under the churning leaves, cracked and brown from the onset of autumn, but now mush that shuddered when a brown scarred foot pressed down upon it, leaving no imprint in its wake.

Mother Nature left footprints in the very spirit and soul of the earth, nothing so mundane as the physical. 

The night was absolutely still, fraught with silence,frozen in time with predators prowling through the trees, her body, wet and gleaming like fresh ebony in the rain, her hair, fanning like the slow weave of snakes. There were brilliant green feathers in her hair, dampened now, but firmly woven in, that matched her bright, bright green eyes, that piercing colour of fresh new shoots, glowing like lamps in the darkness.

The moon was a cheery counterpoint to the nature of the night. A distant, chilly blaze of light, it was nonetheless clear and welcoming, casting a gilded, kind light down over the darkness, turning the dew settling on the leaves to diamonds and the wetness on her skin to gleaming silvery chainmail. 

And yet.

There was a restraint in the lightning, kindly striking a tree that went up in instant, flickering flames, doused hissing by the rain. Too damp for a forest fire which would spread instantly in these summer-dried woods, cells swollen and blessed by the heat of a merciless sun, a fire that would spread and consume the nearby town in its hunger.

A tiny consideration. The storm would happen anyway. The rain would happen anyway. But the epicentre spared the innocent, already devastated by Pestilence moving through. 

Eighteen years ago, Mother Nature would have offered no stay against the devastation of a fire added to the wreck of disease. The moon, pulsing gently overhead, teased her with that reminder.

“Would that I could just blot you out, and spare myself from your preaching,” Mother Nature muttered darkly as the moon shimmered in celestial laughter.

This was an old scene, one oft-repeated over the thousands of years Mother Nature had roamed the training fields of her young, coaxing life from even the most stubborn and barren of places. Above all, the moon had watched, a constant companion throughout the ages. They had never been called friends, no, there was too much bad blood between them for that, the memory of once-fathers and once-ages, a Tsar that had pushed his General to the brink of collapse and further, until he turned inside-out and fell to darkness to escape the relentless weight of expectation. But for all of their professed hatred, the moon pulled her tides, drawing close, before respectfully backing off in a constant, gentle cycle that steadily broke down even the rockiest cliffs.

Not friends, certainly not. Nothing so trivial for ones so old. 

A little more, the moon seemed to coax, and Mother Nature huffed a great sigh of aggravation, but faintly, her lips twitched into the faintest lightening of the perpetual storm on her face. It wasn’t every day, after all, that someone prepared a surprise just for her - why, Nature could count on one hand the people that even bothered to interact with her regularly, rather than cowering in fear.

A pale moonbeam skittered out ahead of her, touching on protruding roots, making a pathway from the stars. It was deep and cool and radiant, stripped shadow from everything and made all curiously flat, reflective, like a mirror. Under its wan touch, the night appeared pale and lovely, deceptively so, like a maiden trained to kill.

With the air of one who is greatly put upon, but too tired to resist, Mother Nature followed the moonbeam, silent and slinking as a snake, grumbling all the while about how little the moon respected the fact that her job was actually a fairly busy one, and that she had things she ought to be  _ doing,  _ and his rehabilitation attempts were sincerely  _ unwelcome.  _ Her complaining, of course, passed utterly unheeded. She doubted that he would ever be satisfied with her way of life, civilisation, and approximate friendliness. 

She refused to admit that sometimes, the moon’s urges led her to valuable lessons and memories, even if, (and now, her heart ached, for the memories of immortals are long and it had not been even a full decade since her child’s eyes had passed through her like she was so much empty air) they were sore-learned and painful.

The moon shone a little smugly, in the cold brilliance oddly reminiscent of wet feathers. Mother Nature never seemed to mind a break when Toothiana squeezed an infrequent rest stop out of her own busy schedule, it reminded. 

Visible even in the dimness, Mother Nature’s cheeks darkened to the warm red of magma. They had had so much to catch up on, hours were idled away spent in Toothiana’s arms, preening her feathers, talking until their voices were hoarse and then the silences that stretched on days afterwards, the inevitable fights of proud wills clashing - and the post-argument reconciliation, ending more often than not with them exhausted on beds of moss. The thing they had was young and shy, born out of pity and tainted with memories of the past, but it was good, and it was safe, and Nature would trade it for nothing. 

“That’s - private!” she spluttered,  _ “Lunar,  _ if you have been spying-”

Abruptly, the moon began shining very brightly, as if in great embarrassment, and a hasty spiral of apologetic, negative moonbeams splashed off the nearby trees. It seemed to withdraw, and something like an awkward silence settled in its place. Far away, in his isolated observatory, Nature could almost picture his flush, as radiantly silver as the rest of him, hiding his chubby face in his chubby hands, every part of him as soft, pampered and yielding as she was iron-hard, battle-scarred, and remorseless. A study in contrasts, then, and it was obvious Tooth preferred the warrior sort.

Mother Nature took the smugness then, and said, slyly, “I do so know how she is one of your  _ favourite  _ Guardians...” 

It was cruel to tease him; Mim, all alone on his moon, was still a man, and one with - if the records of his father were to be believed - a formidable family reputation in bed. It was no wonder he’d fixated on his Guardians, after all these years, the dearest creatures to his heart, and his most-longed-for companions. Mother Nature could call herself biased, but she couldn’t even fault him for choosing the most beautiful of them to admire, either.

The moon pulsed wildly, but remained as stubbornly silent and remote as ever, though the moonbeams were notably darker, allowing edges of shadow to seep in, from his distraction..

“Indeed,” she teased, “I have heard some interesting things about how you have happened to, in the past, invited her up to the Moon  _ alone.  _ A terrible shame, really, that you picked the one Guardian  _ least  _ likely to be interested.”

The moon seemed as if it wanted to shrink in on itself and disappear. So, Tooth had told her about those incredibly awkward, stilted attempts. There was a reason he had only tried those tactics twice, once on a deeply confused North, once on a rather-less confused but even more uninterested Tooth, and it was easier to say that he was simply not cut out to be a natural at seduction. Or indeed, talking for any length of time - say, five minutes - without devolving into terrible panics and requiring cordial and a long rest in a quiet dark room.  A few clouds, like blushes, drifted across the moon’s pasty surface.

Mother Nature paused, and then said wickedly, “I have also heard that Sandy’s always ready to experiment, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.”

Blanching in horror, the moon immediately tried to redirect the conversation by shining very diligently on the path ahead. He knew that too well! But any sane man feared the Sandman’s advances, if they didn’t, they enjoyed a rather loose connection to a physical body, were fools, or were in the business of seeking out a quick death. To sweet, sheltered Mim, whose baby-skin was smooth and uncut by even the slightest scrape, watching Sandy pulp the skulls of men between his tiny, underestimated hands, blood, brains and bone squelching up between those fat little fingers that would soon be artfully weaving the next innocent dream of unicorns and prancing fairies, was enough to convince him that he was none of those things.

The path ahead twisted around two skeletal black trunks, laced with icy filigree, as if they were eternal, stiff-limbed dancers, garbed all over in shining, fragile lace. Only one creature had the power to scrawl such errantly elegant designs in so thin and impermanent a medium, but Nature was not familiar enough with his work to guess ahead where the moon was leading her, rather blind, sadly, after all these years, to her own wonders.

The secret was out as soon as she rounded the bend, and even Nature’s imperious foot was forced to falter, because the frozen pond was not so much a mirror but an eye, a great, staring eye of the brilliant moon, throwing off light like the glare of floodlights, creating faint, whimsical shadows twisting along the treeline. The light was so painfully, strongly bright, that Mother Nature hesitated, her eyes slimming to pinpricks to deal with the strength of it, and it was forgiveable that she did not see the ragged patch of shadow until her first austerious step onto the icy pond, the slickness and roughness of the scratched ice - half-melted and pockmarked from children skating - chilled beneath her roughened foot, but utterly unfelt, so tough and thick was the layer of callus and rough skin over her bare soles.

The moment she did though, she stopped dead, and a low, threatening wind whined through the trees, the hiss and snap of branches every bit as unfriendly as the growl from the sky.

A lanky man, if he could be called that, was curled up on his knees, clutching his head in his hands as if fearing he would fall apart from the pressure there. His black cloak was worn through with holes and dust, but he was unharmed, only nervous, like a child bravely facing the unknown, but desperate for a hand of heavenly comfort. He seemed uncertain of himself, fidgety and anxious in the light; constantly, his eyes lifted to scan the shadows around the pond, reassuring himself that they were still there. As soon as he heard her footsteps, a hope and awe so desperate it seemed despairing dawned over his face, and he leapt to his feet, instinctively snapping into a smart, military salute.

Barely had he done so, though, when his hand dropped, and a surprisingly human flush burned its way up his sallow cheeks. He dropped into parade rest, instead, which was not much better, and had Mother Nature been a spirit of lightheartedness and amusement, she perhaps would have laughed at his unnatural, instinctive pose.

Now, it only darkened her scowl, and caused the wind to moan, eerie with hailstones beginning to hiss down like silent, deadly bullets. He flinched when the first struck him, a bloom of white on his shoulder, and fixed her with a resolute, but understanding stare.

“H-Hello, Seraphina,” he said, in a raspy tone. 

Mother Nature glanced from the smugly shining moon, to the shadow-stained form of her once-father, back to the moon again. “Fuck you, you  _ bastard,”  _ she snarled venomously, and turned instantly to stalk back into the forest, restraining herself from smiting Pitch with a bolt of well-timed lightning.

The moon shimmered a laugh, and said,  _ Give him twelve years to change your mind. _

**Author's Note:**

> Based off a suggestion by ( http://sylphidine.tumblr.com/ ) that there was a connection between Seraphina and Sophie due to the repeated butterfly motif. I take no credit for the idea.


End file.
